Inhabiting: The New Frontier of Inequality

Rethinking global priorities in the face of the habitability crisis, ahead of the World Urban Forum

May 7, 2027. As the 13th World Urban Forum approaches, a reality is emerging—one that remains largely underestimated: 21st-century inequalities have changed in nature. They are no longer defined solely by access to income, services, or opportunities. They are now determined by the very possibility of inhabiting.

Who can still live in cities?

Who is pushed to the margins, displaced further and further away, silently excluded?

In a world shaped by mounting pressure on resources, intensifying climate crises, and unprecedented urbanization, inhabiting is becoming a field of selection. The conditions of inhabiting are hardening, becoming scarcer, increasingly commodified. They are organizing an ever more brutal divide between those who can remain and those who are forced to leave.

And yet, we continue to interpret these dynamics through outdated frameworks. We speak of housing as just another sector, another public policy, when it has in fact become the space where all contemporary tensions converge and unfold.

Failing to see this — or to name it — is to accept that exclusion becomes the norm. Because today, what is at stake is no longer simply access to the city — it is the very right to exist within it.

Revisiting dominant narratives

Over the past decades, several dominant narratives have shaped our understanding of the world. Among them, the culturalist perspective advanced by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has had a lasting influence, suggesting that 21st-century conflicts would primarily be civilizational in nature. But this is only one lens among others.

Alongside it, a narrative of integrative globalization emphasizes fluid exchanges and positive interdependencies. Cities are seen as connected hubs and engines of growth. Yet this vision often obscures asymmetric dependencies, vulnerabilities in global supply chains, and growing territorial inequalities.

We also find the paradigm of development through economic growth, which treats expansion as the primary indicator of progress. It largely overlooks the question of growth in a world of finite resources. It does not address what growth is worth if it produces uninhabitable territories.

Similarly, techno-solutionist narratives promise smarter cities through optimization and data-driven management. But in doing so, they tend to shift social inequalities into technical problems, and conflicts of use into matters of governance.

These narratives differ, but share a common limitation: they tend to sidestep the material conditions of existence. They speak of flows, innovation, performance, and identity.But they rarely address what makes everyday life possible: access to land, water, energy, essential services - and ultimately, shelter.

In other words, they do not fully confront the question of habitability. These issues are acknowledged, but rarely organized as a structuring principle.

A transversal issue still insufficiently structured: habitability

Each of these approaches addresses, in its own way, aspects of urban living conditions—access to services, infrastructure, environmental quality, and social inclusion. Yet they are not always framed within a unifying concept: habitability.

To inhabit is not simply to occupy a built environment. It implies a set of interrelated conditions:

• access to land

• availability of essential resources, particularly water and energy

• access to basic services

• security and stability of tenure

• quality of the environment

Together, these dimensions define the concrete possibility of living in a place.

Sketch by Le Corbusier : the contemporary city (1925)

Housing: recognized but still fragmented in global frameworks

Housing is acknowledged within international frameworks. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 11, include a specific target (11.1) aimed at ensuring access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing.

Similarly, the New Urban Agenda, adopted in Quito in 2016, affirms the right to adequate housing (¶31), highlights the importance of security of tenure (¶35), and calls for the transformation of informal settlements (¶109–111).

These are significant advances. However, housing is still often treated as one component among many in urban policies, rather than as a structuring lever capable of articulating social, economic, and environmental challenges.

Toward a systemic reading of habitability

This observation does not reflect an absence of consideration, but rather a form of fragmentation.

Issues related to housing, services, resources, and the environment are present in existing frameworks, but are often addressed in a sectoral way. In a context of increasing pressure - resource scarcity, climate disruption, land tensions - a more integrated reading becomes necessary. It leads to a central question: Under what conditions can cities be sustainably inhabited?

Naming a shift: toward inequalities of habitability

Current transformations point to the emergence of a new form of inequality. Beyond disparities in income or access to services, there is a growing differentiation in the conditions of inhabiting:

• unequal exposure to climate risks

• unequal access to resources

• disparities in environmental quality

• increasing territorial segmentation

These dynamics contribute to the social and spatial fragmentation of cities. In this perspective, contemporary tensions are increasingly linked to access to, use of, and control over increasingly constrained conditions of inhabiting.

A major political and urban challenge

When conditions of habitability deteriorate, their effects accumulate:

• worsening inequalities

• forced mobility

• increased social tensions

• weakening of urban cohesion

The risk is not only that of isolated crises, but of a gradual destabilization of urban systems.

The World Urban Forum: an opportunity for clarification

In this context, the World Urban Forum provides a valuable space to deepen these discussions.

Beyond sharing experiences, it offers an opportunity to clarify diagnoses, strengthen the articulation between issues and evolve analytical frameworks.

Toward a post-2030 agenda centered on habitability

The evolution of the Sustainable Development Goals opens an important perspective. Without necessarily multiplying objectives, the challenge is to better articulate existing dimensions around a central principle: habitability. That could involve a stand-alone 'Housing' SDG. Such an approach would make it possible to more closely connect housing, services, and resources; more strongly integrate climate issues; enhance the coherence of urban policies.

Conclusion : Naming in order to act

Existing frameworks have enabled significant progress. Yet in the face of ongoing transformations, further conceptual clarification is needed. Recognizing that contemporary inequalities increasingly relate to the conditions of inhabiting does not invalidate existing approaches - it complements them.

In a world marked by growing constraints, the ability to inhabit becomes a structuring issue.

Housing, in this context, is not merely one component of urban policy. It is one of the fundamental anchors of future urban balances.