Training Session 1 - Capacity Development - Planning for Safe and Resilient Cities & Communities from theory to plan

This training is delivered as a set of two interlinked WUF Academy “Training of Trainers” sessions, each of 2 hours, jointly led by the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP) and the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP), in partnership with RTPI and under the auspices of the Habitat Professionals Forum (HPF). Together, the two sessions form a coherent and complementary capacity-building package designed to strengthen practical capacities for safe, resilient, and sustainable place-based housing and communities, fully aligned with the WUF13 theme. The sessions are intentionally sequenced to provide participants with a clear pathway from capacity development planning to implementation, responding directly to a key challenge highlighted in the WUF13 background paper: the persistent gap between policy ambition and on-the-ground delivery. Session 1 (ISOCARP-led), submitted under this application, addresses a critical but often overlooked bottleneck in place-based housing and urban development: the lack of structured capacity development planning within institutions responsible for delivering place-based housing and urban services. Participants are equipped with a systematic framework to assess capacity gaps; define priorities aligned with SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda; and translate these into actionable capacity development plans. The session combines expert input, interactive diagnostics, and peer learning, with focused attention on place-based housing delivery, climate risk, informality, and post-crisis contexts. Session 2 (CAP-led), submitted through a separate but linked application, builds directly on Session 1 by focusing on capacity development tools and delivery mechanisms. Participants work with a practical “toolbox” to operationalize capacity development plans across governance scales, using applied examples related to recovery and futureproofing, informal settlements, land and tenure, participation, and digital, data, and AI-enabled planning. The session concludes with individual action planning to support application in participants’ own contexts. Participants who complete both sessions in full will receive a certificate of completion, reinforcing the Training-of-Trainers approach and supporting replication beyond WUF13. Selecting both sessions together enables WUF13 to offer an end-to-end, implementation-oriented capacity development experience with clear and transferable value for different stakeholders.