The second habitat conference (the city summit), held in Istanbul in 1996, represent the turning point of international efforts in supporting social and environmental persistent cities. Moreover, the governments together with their partners in the second habitat conference have approved the fact that working to make cities safer, healthier and fair requires extensive and cooperative policies as well as strategies to contain all elements related to persistent development of human settlements. The second habitat conference was characterized by a historical precedence which is the joining of representatives of local authority and unofficial organizations as well as the private sector, academics, representatives of other groups in its negotiations. These negotiations resulted in an international policy called habitat conference agenda. The second habitat conference directed its efforts to find unique expertise as well as the best actions to adopt as the practical way to resolve the coming urban challenges.

The habitat conference agenda, approved by 171 governments in the second conference, is a universal call on all levels and it contains a framework that includes objectives, principles and promises that reflect the positive consideration for the persistence of human settlement development. Cities must provide suitable shelter for all, an urban, healthy, safe environment, basic facilities, productive workers as well as making all these commitments true.

The Agenda can be considered a map that clarifies the way to urbanize the world by introducing strategies and programs that would lead to achieve persistent development of urban areas in the world. By approving this agenda the international community approved two main principles namely enablement and cooperation together with setting principles of international equality and cooperation as means to reach the intended goals i.e. providing shelter for everyone and persistent development of human settlements in an urbanizing world. The main message that can be derived from the habitat conference is that the organized urbanization; one which is interested in containing transparency, responsibility, general cooperation and partnership, is important to achieve the intended goals.

When members of the UN approved the agenda, commitment was generated; commitment to apply the concept of partnership and adopt ways to apply means of effective cooperation in the process of making plans, administrating, capacity building for all the partners and follow up on the achievement of the goals. This can happen by establishing a network of communication and applying the recent technical information. As mentioned in the agenda, countries must follow up and evaluate their performance in their own countries through collecting and analyzing their urban indicators and also by pinpointing the best practice to improve the citizens' way of life.

The international efforts have succeeded in producing a framework for the international habitat conference which was presented to the second conference. The most important outcome was confirming the international framework of the conference.