Financing the Systems that Make Housing Work - Bridging Public Priorities and Private Capital for Resilient Cities

Cities across the world are under increasing pressure to deliver essential urban services that underpin adequate, resilient living conditions, including reliable energy and mobility, functioning markets, and local economic infrastructure. While capital exists globally, city-led service delivery projects often fail to progress from concept to implementation. The challenge is not only the availability of funding, but how financing systems function in practice. Fragmentation across institutions, weak coordination between public and private actors, unclear risk allocation, and high transaction costs continue to constrain investment at the city level. These systemic barriers limit cities’ ability to finance the services and infrastructure that underpin adequate housing outcomes, particularly in rapidly urbanising and fiscally constrained contexts. This session focuses on a critical but often overlooked part of the urban development challenge: how financing systems function in practice, and how access to capital for city-led service delivery projects can be improved by strengthening coordination across the financing value chain. Rather than focus on individual financial instruments or formal partnership models, the session examines the practical conditions that shape whether projects succeed or fail, including how information flows between cities and financiers, where costs and delays accumulate, how risk is understood, priced, and managed across institutions, whilst also exploring what country-based finance expertise is needed to translate national and city priorities into investable action. The discussion will explore how transaction costs act as a key barrier to scaling investment in urban services that support adequate housing outcomes and resilient communities. Drawing on real-world experience across different global contexts, the session will examine how early engagement with finance actors, clearer role definition, improved project preparation, and the involvement of intermediaries can reduce friction and make city projects easier to finance. In doing so, it responds to a central question facing cities globally: not only what needs to be delivered, but how delivery can realistically be financed within constrained public budgets and complex governance environments. City representatives, financial institutions, intermediaries, and delivery partners will be convened in a single space, reducing fragmentation and strengthening relationships for action.