LocationsUNDP’s Safe, Caring & Resilient Cities offer
Cities that work for everyone
October 28, 2026
Photo credit: UNDP Myanmar
A streetlight can to an extent determine whether a woman feels safe travelling home. Affordable and accessible childcare can determine whether a parent takes a job. A shaded market, reliable transport or accessible public toilet can help a street vendor keep earning during a heatwave.
These everyday details shape who can move, work, learn, lead and participate in city life. Yet many cities still plan for an imagined “default” resident, overlooking how safety, mobility, care responsibilities and climate risks affect people differently.
Whose voices are heard, which data counts, where resources are invested and who influences these choices can fundamentally alter the course of a city's development. When women's experiences and priorities shape these decisions, the benefits reach far beyond women themselves. This can expand a city's economic potential, strengthen its social fabric and improve its ability to respond to change. It is not simply about who benefits from urban development, but what cities can achieve.
The stakes are particularly high in Asia and the Pacific, where more than 2.2 billion people already live in urban areas, with another 1.2 billion expected by 2050. But urban growth does not automatically produce equal opportunity. Across the region, 64% of women experience violence in public spaces, while surveys in several cities show that more than half feel unsafe using public transport at night. Women and girls also spend 4.1 times more time on unpaid care and domestic work than men, limiting their access to paid work, education and public life.
Population ageing is adding to these pressures. In Bhutan, the share of people aged 60 and above is projected to rise from 10% in 2024 to 24% by 2050 increasing demand for elderly care services. Without adequate care infrastructure, much of this growing responsibility will continue to fall on families, particularly women.
These gaps limit women's livelihoods and leadership, and cost cities and countries in productivity and cohesion. UNDP's Safe, Caring and Resilient Cities offer, one of three signature offers in its Regional Gender Equality Offer for Asia and the Pacific 2026–2029, helps cities close them by building better evidence, strengthening leadership and embedding gender equality in how they govern.
Making overlooked needs visible
Care is something every city already deals with. It's rarely something cities plan for directly. A city may know how many childcare centres it has without knowing whether they are affordable or located where they are needed. Care is still too often treated as a private matter and seldom planned as municipal infrastructure.
UNDP's Care Georeferencing Tool maps where care services are located, where people who need care, including children, older persons and persons with disabilities, live and whether they can access those services. This reveals care deserts, where need is high and access is low, and can be overlaid with climate and disaster risk data. One database produces two maps: an internal map that helps planners direct budgets, staffing and infrastructure, and a public map that helps residents and caregivers find nearby services and plan a route to them. Implementation is under way in Bhutan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and India with efforts to advance its application in Thailand.
The same applies to climate risks. Knowing where heat is most intense does not show how it affects women street vendors and gig and platform workers, who can lose income and face health risks where shade, water and toilets are lacking. Through Climate Resilient and Safe Cities, UNDP and UNICEF are building this evidence in selected Asia-Pacific cities, combining analysis of heat action plans, budgets and services with direct engagement with women workers and their collectives. The findings will inform a practical assessment methodology that cities can adapt to identify and respond to these risks.
Turning evidence into action
Who decides how evidence is used matters as much as the evidence itself.
UNDP’s Leadership Capabilities work helps mayors, councils and city officials strengthen gender-responsive planning and budgeting, while strengthening how women leaders and community voices shape urban priorities and their implementation.
Future Ready Urban Governance Training for 11 cities in Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, June 2026
Beyond training, UNDP convenes city leaders and practitioners at regional platforms such as the World Cities Summit and the Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development, where cities share what has worked and learn from one another. Leadership also connects the rest of the offer, preparing city teams for the Seal journey and helping them apply care maps and climate evidence in plans and budgets.
Making gender equality part of how cities govern
Without institutional change, gains depend on individual projects and leaders.
UNDP's Gender Equality Seal for Cities, launched at the World Cities Summit in June 2026, provides a framework for this. Adapted from the Gender Equality Seal for Public Institutions, it drives reform across plans and budgets, data and accountability, public spaces and services, and the municipal workplace, including zero tolerance for sexual harassment.
In April 2026, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority became the first public institution in Asia and the Pacific to receive Gold under the Gender Equality Seal for Public Institutions, the framework on which the city Seal builds. It integrated gender into more than 200 municipal projects, used citizen data to guide over 30,000 new streetlights, reduced its gender wage gap from 3.1% to 0.9%, and strengthened inclusive health services. Other cities are following: Ulaanbaatar began its Seal journey in April 2026, and Quezon City joins in early 2027.
Bangkok Metropolitan Authority achieves the Gold Gender Equality Seal
Photo credit: UNDP Thailand
What cities can do now
As cities mark World Cities Day on 31 October, rapid urbanisation across Asia and the Pacific is a chance to rethink whom city growth benefits.
City leaders must bring women’s voices into decisions, back commitments with resources and hold institutions accountable for results. UNDP’s Safe, Caring and Resilient Cities offer is open to city governments ready to take this on, whether by mapping care needs, building gender-responsive leadership or beginning the Seal journey.