Cultural and natural heritage in localised Sdgs Creating multiple identities in housing the metropolis

This session examines the role of metropolitan cultural and natural heritage in localizing the SDGs within the context of housing the contemporary metropolis. In response to WUF13’s theme, it frames housing not only as a technical or quantitative challenge, but as a cultural, social, and environmental process through which safety, belonging, and resilience are produced, positioning culture as a driver of sustainable development. As metropolitan regions increasingly shape social, spatial, and environmental conditions, heritage is reframed as a dynamic framework through which multiple identities, governance structures, and territorial logics can be articulated and negotiated. The session brings together recent theoretical, academic, and practice-based contributions from the Heritopolis initiative and its partners. It will present the Heritopolis Working Papers, which advance a metropolitan-scale reinterpretation of heritage building on the HUL and the NUA, addressing mass-housing governance, informality, vulnerability, and resilience at metropolitan scale. These are complemented by reflections from the Built Heritage journal special issue on Heritopolis and perspectives from Latin America drawn from Metrópolis latinoamericanas, territorios en disputa, focused on Mexico, which foregrounds dialogue of knowledges, contested territories, and metropolitan governance, including challenges related to informal, underutilized, and heritage-sensitive housing. Additional inputs include outcomes from the Rio Conference, Patrimônio nas Regiões Metropolitanas da América Latina: para além do conflito, the Global Urban Lecture on the role of heritage in metropolitan contexts, reflections from the Urban Thinkers’ Campus in Tel Aviv on liveable neighbourhoods and the garden city in the 21st century as contributors to safe and resilient housing, and insights from Heritopolis in Africa presented at the Pawani Innovation Week on localizing SDG 11 through resilience and heritage in coastal regions. The Anthedon project report addresses cultural and natural heritage in fragile metropolitan contexts, focusing on housing recovery in Gaza and demonstrating how heritage can support recovery, community resilience, and pathways toward peace. Each panellist will offer a short presentation, followed by a moderated discussion linking heritage, housing, and SDG localization across regions and scales, before opening the dialogue to the audience.