Mediterranean cities know well that housing stress, climate change, and tourism intensity are no longer separate agendas. They increasingly collide in the same neighborhoods, placing pressure on housing, services, infrastructure, and governance systems, and testing cities’ capacity to remain resilient under constant tension. This session brings together four cities from across the Mediterranean that are confronting similar challenges, to foster peer learning, cooperation and city-to-city inspiration. It will highlight existing partnerships, including the collaboration between Barcelona, Saida (Lebanon) MedCities and UN-Habitat City Resilience Global Programme, where a participatory risk mapping and multilevel resilience diagnosis has been developed to identify systemic vulnerabilities and inform territorial resilience priorities at the city scale. The region is one of the most water-stressed in the world and at the same time one of the world’s fastest-growing tourism destinations. Highly exposed coastal settlements and rising climate risks intersect with acute housing affordability and accessibility challenges, intensified by seasonal population peaks, rising temperatures, and climate-related hazards that are already disrupting everyday urban life. Furthermore, as a crossroads between the Global North and South, the region reflects deep inequalities in access to adequate housing, resources, institutional capacity, and resilience solutions, despite facing many shared risks. The conversation will reflect opportunities and challenges repeatedly raised by Mediterranean cities, including governance capacity and decentralisation, waste and wastewater systems under strain, climate-resilient infrastructure and financing (including early warning and climate-proof housing), public-space greening as a frontline climate adaptation tool, and the growing housing affordability and accessibility squeeze. Format & Agenda To avoid a classic panel, the session will follow an on-stage “resilience clinic” format: short city stories framed as real dilemmas, followed by rapid peer responses and moderated decision moments that surface key trade-offs such as: coastal development vs risk exposure, housing and public space adaptation strategies, tourism revenues vs housing affordability and short-term fixes vs long-term resilience

Date and Place

19 May, Baku (Azerbaijan)

16h – 17:30h

Information and Agenda