Digital participation

Effective governance is fundamental to delivering adequate housing, land, and basic services in rapidly urbanizing contexts. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. This number is projected to rise to nearly 70 per cent by 2050, making coordination across national, regional, and local governments more critical than ever. At the same time, over one billion people live in informal settlements, often without secure tenure or reliable access to water, electricity, transportation or other essential urban infrastructure.

These inequalities highlight the need to address governance gaps and strengthen inclusion. Fragmented institutional mandates, limited civil participation, and weak accountability mechanisms often continue to undermine inclusive and sustainable urban development and are slowing the progress towards global commitments.

Participatory multilevel governance brings together institutions across levels of government with communities, civil society, academia, and the private sector to co-create solutions tailored to local realities. By aligning policies vertically and horizontally, these approaches reduce repeated work, strengthen trust, and enhance policy coherence.

UNITAC advances people-centred, data-informed decision-making by developing participatory digital tools and methods that make governance more inclusive, transparent, and accountable. These approaches enable local voices, particularly those of marginalized communities, women and youth to shape urban policies, ensuring that policies and innovations respond to lived realities of all residents and serve the public good.

Access the PDF about UNITAC's work on digital participation.