Habitat III, the third UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, met in Quito in 2016 and saw 193 countries adopt the New Urban Agenda. The document set out a roughly twenty-year, non-binding framework promoting compact, connected, inclusive and well-planned urbanisation, with attention to housing, land, services and finance. It built on the Habitat tradition and aligned with the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals. Implementation was left to national and local governments with UN-Habitat support.
The New Urban Agenda became the prevailing global consensus statement on how cities ought to be planned and governed. It provides shared principles and language that frame national urban policies and international cooperation on urbanisation.