Introduction

One key underpinning of the rationale for having 17 SDGs, each with multiple targets and indicators, is that they are designed to be integrated in order to represent the comprehensive or holistic nature of sustainable development. Indeed, this responded to a major criticism of the far more limited nature and scope of the MDGs (see Chapter 1). Ruan (2023) surveys the literature on all 17 SDGs in relation to the complexity of urban systems.

It is certainly true that achievement of all the targets of SDG 11 would have implications for all the other 16 goals. Accordingly, considerable care was taken during the SDG finalization process to avoid conflicts, contradictions and double counting. Hence, when alternatives existed or the full set of draft goals contained evident double counting, indicators were placed in the goal to which they were most central. This sometimes required late rewording or even more substantive refocusing of particular indicators. To give one simple example, Target 11.1 – on adequate, safe and affordable housing – in effect provides the urban component of SDG 1, on eliminating poverty. Had there been an equivalent target in SDG 1, there would have been double counting. Of course, a corollary of this decision is that a gap has arisen, in as much as there is no target on the adequacy of rural housing.

Nevertheless, it was impossible to eliminate all such issues of interactions among the targets and indicators, and wrinkles remain. Inevitably, there are positive complementarities and synergies (as intended) across goals, but also some contradictions or (negative) trade-offs, when progress against one target or indicator in a particular goal implies or might imply a negative impact on another target or indicator in a different goal. Indeed, how national and local governments choose to implement the SDGs, based on perceived relevance, availability of data, ease of reporting, implementational capacity (Saner et al. 2017) and political convenience, might also involve some trade-offs in terms of prioritization in the many situations when it is impracticable to pursue the full set of goals, targets and indicators. Accordingly, Ramani (2022: 2– 3) refers to SDG implementation as a grand challenge of the sort that many governments are now pursuing in order to make step changes in investment.

Introduction

Pulling the various strands of the argument and evidence together is particularly important for diverse readerships. In so doing, I highlight the SDG 11 process to date and lessons learnt for different stakeholders and audiences, before ending with a forward-looking discussion of how different and more sustainable it is realistic to expect cities and human settlements worldwide to be by the end of the SDGs’ 15-year lifespan in 2030. This also necessitates some reflections on the synergies between the SDGs and the NUA, which continues until 2036.

The decision to create a successor set of normative development goals to the MDGs that would be globally applicable, emphasize sustainability and be more fully representative of the numerous interrelated dimensions of sustainable development was taken at the Rio+ 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. The globally participatory and detailed design process explained in Chapter 1 required considerable time. Indeed, it took until late 2015 to negotiate and agree the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its monitoring and evaluation framework comprising the 17 SDGs, 169 targets and 232 indicators. The NUA, which is the final component of the global sustainable development agenda, was not adopted until late 2016, a year after the life of the SDGs had begun. Conversely, it runs until 2036, six years beyond the SDGs, which raises questions about how the SDGs can act as the M&E framework for the NUA during those final years. These have yet to be answered. Chapter 2 was devoted to a detailed explanation of the anatomy of SDG 11 and the process of debate, negotiation and empirical trials by which the final versions of the respective targets and indicators were arrived at.

Implementation of SDG 11 is proving a great challenge in many countries and urban areas, for several interrelated reasons. First, it had no direct precursors in the MDGs or other global monitoring process. Second, it is very complex and spatially rather than sectorally based. Third, it focuses principally at a subnational rather than national scale. Fourth, implementation requires the direct involvement of many different stakeholders. Fifth and finally, in most countries and cities “the constitutional and legal mandates; institutional capacities; and human and financial resources required to implement these universal goals are at best weak, and – at worst – confused and contradictory” (Rudd et al. 2018: 191).

Introduction

In this chapter, attention shifts to the diverse ways in which local, regional and national authorities have sought to engage with, embed and implement the SDGs, and especially SDG 11, and how such efforts have been supported by the UN agencies, SDSN and local government membership organizations and networks, such as UCLG, ICLEI, C40 and the Resilient Cities Network (RCities). The range of responses has been substantial. On the one hand, there has been scepticism or senses that they already do as well or better with their existing indicator sets, while, on the other, there has been widespread enthusiastic embrace, seeing the SDG implementation as a potentially valuable way of rethinking service delivery and investment portfolios, and of helping to improve multi-level governance. This chapter also devotes attention to the rise and rapid growth of the Voluntary Local Review mechanism, initiated by New York City when the then newly elected President Trump announced the USA's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change in mid-2017. Specific examples will amplify these positions and experiences, highlighting challenges and obstacles as well as achievements.

Global reviews of progress with implementation

Assessing progress against the respective targets and indicators is essential to ensure that efforts are on track, that appropriate support actions can be implemented in time to augment existing efforts and overcome blockages or impediments and to enable cross-city and cross-country peer learning so as to enhance practice. These monitoring and evaluation efforts are being undertaken at different levels of governance, from the subnational to national, continental, regional and global, and by both official and non-governmental organizations. In respect of the SDGs, of course, the objective is not only to assess progress in and of itself but also in relation to Agenda 2030, for which the SDGs constitute the M&E framework.

The principal official mechanism is the periodic Voluntary National Review (VNR) undertaken by national governments and reported to the HLPF, held annually in July in New York (and, since the onset of the pandemic, also online). UN-Habitat et al. (2018) published a synthesis report of progress on SDG 11 submitted to that year's HLPF, at which it was one of the SDGs being scrutinized.

Introduction

This chapter provides a comprehensive guide to SDG 11, its seven main and three supplementary targets and their respective indicators, explaining what they are intended to measure and how the indicators were derived and tested. In some cases, the targets and indicators have subsequently been refined over the early years by the UN Division of Economic and Social Affairs in the light of experience. Examples are provided of the alternatives considered for particular targets and indicators but eventually rejected – usually in relation to how widely available and easy to measure/obtain the data are – although strong political objections to particular formulations sometimes also played a role.

The first point to reiterate from Chapter 1 is that SDG 11 is not a standalone goal but was purposefully designed as one of 17 interlocking SDGs that, together, are intended to encapsulate the complexity and multifaceted nature of sustainable development and to provide the basis for stimulating action for positive change towards sustainability at national and subnational levels. Indeed, the SDGs form the monitoring and evaluation framework for the 2030 Agenda, one of the central elements of the global sustainable development agenda. Inevitably, however, national, regional and local governments, along with private firms, NGOs and other civil society bodies, are responding selectively, choosing the most important or relevant goals to the nature of their operations and needs. Some SDGs may not be relevant or impose too onerous a monitoring and evaluation burden.

Selectivity is also being exercised within individual SDGs, in terms of which targets and indicators to use on the basis of criteria including perceived importance, relevance, data availability and/or compliance and reporting burden, as well as self-interest in portraying themselves in the most positive light – the so-called “cherry-picking” referred to in Chapter 1. This can make comparative assessments across similar organizations within a sector – let alone across sectors – difficult. Selectivity also loses the opportunity to take advantage of the many interrelationships among targets and indicators of different goals in order to highlight complementary dimensions, such as those in 11 other goals that were designed to complement SDG 11. These interrelationships are examined in Chapter 3.

The publication and ratification of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs by the UN General Assembly alone could not possibly stimulate the required worldwide level of awareness, uptake and implementation of the goals.

The rapid flow of new publications assessing progress in implementation of one or more SDGs at different scales has continued since this book went to press in early 2023 and readers are encouraged to explore these. One benchmark report, however, warrants mention here, namely the Synthesis Report by UN-Habitat on SDG 11, Rescuing SDG 11 for a Resilient Planet (UN-Habitat 2023a), published in July 2023 for the HLPF in New York, where SDG 11 was one of those examined, and the SDG Summit in September 2023 to mark the mid-term of the SDGs’ 15-year lifespan. It is, therefore, the successor to the 2018 evaluation (UN-Habitat et al. 2018), which is covered extensively in this book.

The new report draws extensively on data banks of UN-Habitat and the other collaborating UN agencies, as well as published literature, and reaches very similar conclusions to those in this book. As indicated poignantly by the report's title, there is currently little prospect of achieving most targets and indicators of SDG 11 but there is still time and the opportunity to rescue the situation through rapid upscaling of both ambition but – crucially – also financing and action. Interventions need to be bold, integrated and carefully prioritized to achieve maximum impact, and led by urban governments in collaboration with regional and national governments. The recommended transformative priorities are summarized by target and indicator in Chapter 3 of the main report and Table 1 of the Executive Summary (UN-Habitat 2023b: 11–12).

Introduction

The principal aim of this Sustainability Matters series is to produce an interesting, engaging and accessible set of titles addressing each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a consistent style and format, framed by an introductory volume contextualizing the SDGs and exploring their rationale as an integrated suite that attempts to represent the holistic nature of sustainable development. This is explained by Agenda Publishing's series specification as follows:

This book addresses SDG 11, on sustainable cities and communities. Since each title in the series should be sufficiently robust to serve as an authoritative reference work in its own right, it opens with a contextual discussion in this chapter of the origin and development of the global sustainable development agenda in 2015 and 2016, of which the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs comprise a key element. The Campaign for an Urban SDG – which, along with other actors and coalitions, was ultimately successful in defining what became Goal 11 – is a key part of that story, told later in this chapter, and it draws on personal experience, other authoritative accounts and associated documents. The internal structure and composition of Goal 11 are set out and explained in Chapter 2, along with case studies of how SDG 11 is being used and understood in different contexts, sometimes positively but also selectively and highly instrumentally. The objective is to provide a balanced and dispassionate analysis, highlighting problems and limitations alongside positive applications.

Introduction

Following directly from, and closely related to the contents of, Chapter 4, here I consider various other challenges to achieving the targets of SDG 11 and related urban components of other goals. These can be divided into two somewhat overlapping categories. The first comprises those internal to the SDGs and implementing bodies – especially local and other subnational authorities – such as lack of priority and/or political will, use of other indicator sets, trade-offs and capacity constraints. These were discussed in Chapter 3, and will not be repeated here except when they intersect with other issues relevant to this chapter.

Attention therefore focuses principally on the second category, which contains external constraints, and some that have both external and internal dimensions. By far the most important of these are political tensions and/or lack of clarity and effective collaboration between local, regional and national authorities, as well as changing policy agendas, perhaps as a result of shifts in political control at one or more levels following elections. It is also important to consider the financing of SDG implementation, along with resource constraints resulting from economic recession or shocks, including the Covid-19 pandemic (and perhaps others in future), and extreme events and disasters, such as hurricanes and floods. These cause direct damage and widespread illness and death, as well as requiring rapid redeployment of funds and personnel for disaster management and recovery, thus disrupting normal activities and investment programmes and stalling or reversing previous development gains on the relevant SDG targets and indicators.

Suggested modifications and alternatives to SDG 11

Several recent contributions to the literature have contested various targets and indicators in SDG 11 on theoretical, conceptual, empirical or practical grounds, including data availability. These papers differ considerably in scope, content and proposals. Some echo earlier criticisms raised at the time of formulation and adoption, such as those of Hajer et al. (2015), who argue that the centralized, top-down nature of the SDGs through being steered by intergovernmental organizations and national governments, as well as the lack of or inadequate attention to planetary boundaries and justice, would limit or undermine their transformative potential.