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www.thesolutionsjournal.org | March-April 2014 | Solutions | 37
Perspectives
Currently, there is a unique oppor-
tunity for the global scientific
community to significantly contribute
to sustainable futures through the
United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) process. A
critical issue now under debate in the
UN Open Working Group (OWG)1 on
the SDGs is how they should deal with
urban issues. At stake is whether there
should be a stand-alone urban goal (and
what it might be), and a choice between
the alternatives of dedicated sub-
national reporting or a continuation
of the situation that prevailed under
the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) that are set to expire in 2015.
Decision making within the UN
system is confined to 193 member
states. While many of these are
sympathetic to ensuring that urban
questions are squarely addressed, some
are clearly threatened by the implica-
tion that development assistance may
increasingly shift to cities and away
from rural areas in less developed and
primarily rural economies. For others,
who may prioritize urban issues,
including infrastructure develop-
ment, urban health and well being,
biodiversity, or disaster risk, it is not
clear whether a stand-alone goal or
a mainstreamed approach in which
these factors are incorporated in all the
other goals will more effectively lead
to appropriate action in urban areas.2
Making the Sustainable Development Goals Operational
through an Urban Agenda: Perspectives from Science
by Susan Parnell, José G. Siri, Thomas Elmqvist, Peter Marcotullio,
Anthony Capon, Aromar Revi, Mark Pelling & Jo Ivey Boufford
United Nations Photo / CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0
A critical issue now under debate in the United Nations Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is how they should deal with urban
issues (Palais des Nations, Geneva).
Solutions, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014.
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/
38 | Solutions | March-April 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Perspectives
The Global Urban Transition
Given the profoundly transformative
impact of urbanization (in terms of
rural-urban migration, the growing
proportion of people living in cities,
and the increasing importance of
urban centers for global economic and
resource flows) there has rarely been
a moment when getting the urban
development agenda right has been of
such crucial importance. Well-planned
and governed, cities can enable high
standards of living and economic
development without unsustainable
environmental resource use; they can
protect local and regional ecosystems,
maintain low pollution levels, and
improve human health and wellbe-
ing.3 This is especially true for much of
Africa and Asia, which are the poorest,
least urbanized, but most rapidly
urbanizing regions in the world today.
The unprecedented pace and scale
of urban growth, the cascading impacts
that urban forms have on human
wellbeing and resource use everywhere,
and the risk that the current massive
physical, technical, and institutional
investments in urban areas will “lock
in” features detrimental to health and
sustainability make urbanization a
critical driver of global change. Today,
half the world’s seven billion people live
in cities. By 2030 there will be over one
billion more urban residents and, for
the first time ever, in many parts of the
world the number of rural residents will
start to shrink. The anticipated increase
in urban population of 2.7 billion
people from 2010 to 2050 is larger than
the entire world population in 1950—
this translates into the addition of over
1 million people to the world’s cities
every week (fig.1). By 2050, the urban
share will have grown to two-thirds of
the world’s population. Already, roughly
three-quarters of global economic
activity is urban, and as the urban
population grows, so will the fraction of
global GDP and investments in cities.
UN 2012
Figure 1. The scale of urban population growth through 2050 in a) the world, b) Asia and c) Africa.
—
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050
Millions
AfricaPopula<onGrowth:UrbanandRural
Rural Urban
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | March-April 2014 | Solutions | 39
Perspectives
Addressing Urbanization
in the Sustainable
Development Goals
The moment of the adoption of the
Sustainable Development Goals,
or SDGs, in 2015 could represent
a turning point in how cities are
perceived, structured, and managed.
Inevitably, the precise formulation of
the UN SDGs—including the choice
of targets and indicators—will impact
development priorities in and across
urban and rural places. A possible
urban SDG is important beyond city
boundaries and over generations:
the infrastructure of the built urban
environment draws from regional
ecosystems and has a lifecycle
measured in decades. Whatever we
build now will determine the path
for future generations over large
geographical scales.
One important function of a stand-
alone urban SDG would be to declare
to the world that we have crossed an
important global threshold and are
now a predominantly urban species—
and will continue to become more
so. This could signal to heads of state
the need for a national urban agenda
and enable citizens and policymak-
ers to reimagine urban sustainable
development pathways and to rally
urban stakeholders around practical
evidence-based problem solving—
clearly, ‘cities-as-usual’ will not suffice.
It would also help mobilize efforts
to: 1) address the challenges of urban
poverty and access to basic services
that billions of slum dwellers across
the world struggle with each day; 2)
promote integrated infrastructure
design and service delivery as well
as improved land use planning and
efficient spatial concentration; and
3) contribute to urban resilience in
the face of climate change and other
disaster risks—benefits that disparate
goals or targets may make difficult to
realize for cities.
Conversely, mainstreaming urban
questions within other SDGs, through
defining urban targets and indicators,
could send a powerful message that
urbanization and urban phenomena
touch on all aspects of sustainable
development. In the context of a
framework that is necessarily simpli-
fied to allow for political feasibility,
mainstreamed urban targets and
indicators in other SDGs would affirm
the kinds of approaches that are
critical to solving complex urban prob-
lems—approaches that consider the
systems within which these problems
are embedded and with appropriate
sub-national data, address them in an
integrated way.
In an important sense, however,
the question of stand-alone versus
mainstreaming, while politically sig-
nificant in signaling the precedence of
cities within the sustainable develop-
ment framework, is less important
than the setting of targets, selection
of indicators, and determination of
scales and modes of reporting. It is
precisely these targets and indicators
that will set the tone for development
priorities. With this in mind, it is
essential that they be well-defined,
methodologically sound, and feasible
for all nation-states to collect at sub-
national scales. Wherever possible,
they should be multi-dimensional,
capturing aspects of sustainability
and development in multiple domains
or sectors and illuminating the
connections among them. Indicators
need not be complex to fulfill such
criteria; for example, a measure of the
proportion of urban trips made using
active transport modes (i.e., walking,
cycling, and public transportation)
would capture information relevant
and important for issues related to
health, transport, energy, environ-
mental pollution, and land use. There
is a growing body of evidence from
which such metrics can be drawn, and
since it is likely that the SDGs will be
the single most comprehensive data
collection system of the early 21st
century, their structure may enable or
suppress analytical possibilities across
all of science.
A Role for Science
and Scientists
The SDG process must be much more
than just a refinement of the MDGs. It
should aim, rather, at a fundamental
expansion of the development agenda to
include evolving environmental, social,
and economic questions that impact the
lives of all people, everywhere. To ensure
that future urban realities are repre-
sented in the post-2015 development
agenda, it will be critical that scientists
engage in the setting of appropriate
targets and indicators, prioritizing moni-
toring at subnational scales. The SDGs
need, among other things, to be:
• flexible—to enable cross-
referencing of environmental,
social, and economic questions;
The moment of the adoption of the Sustainable
Development Goals, or SDGs, in 2015 could represent
a turning point in how cities are perceived, structured,
and managed.
40 | Solutions | March-April 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Perspectives
• scalable—adopting indicators
that make sense locally but,
where appropriate, can be adapted
for national, regional or global
agendas; and,
• based on credible data, including
the expansion of sub-national data
where necessary.
Addressing the existing gaps in
data, theory, and analytical capacity—
especially at the urban scale—should
be a priority for the global scientific
community. The Future Earth4 program
provides an opportunity to mobilize
a large community of scientists to
address the challenges of sustainable
development and the reporting systems
against which progress on the SDG
goals will be measured. Scientists with
urban and data expertise must be called
on to join the technical discussions on
selecting the SDG targets and indica-
tors. If poorly defined and managed,
these will almost certainly have
unintended consequences and nega-
tive outcomes that will be difficult to
reverse. Given the critical importance
of rapid current and future urbaniza-
tion for the national and global
sustainable development, silence from
the scientific community may be the
most dangerous path of all.
References
1. The United Nations uses an Open Working Group
(OWG) structure to engage stakeholders other
than nation-states. In particular, the OWG on
SDGs allows Major Groups and the Sustainable
Development Solutions Network to provide input
on issues relevant to the development agenda for
the 2015 to 2020 time period.
2. A compendium of UN member-state statements
on Sustainable Cities at the 7th session of the
UN General Assembly Open Working Group on
SDGs, January 6 and 7, 2014, is presented at: http://
urbansdg.org/?page id=898.
3. SDSN, UN-Habit, UCLG, ICLEI, Cities Alliance,
Metropolis. Why the World needs an Urban SDG
[online]. http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/
content/documents/2569130918-SDSN-Why-the-
World-Needs-an-Urban-SDG.pdf. www.urbans.
dg.org.
4. McGranahan, G et al. Ecosystems and human well-
being: Current state and trends, Vol. 1 (Hassan, R,
Scholes, R & Ash, N, eds) [online] Ch. 27, 795–825
(Island Press, Washington, DC, 2005). http://www.
maweb.org.
5. Elmqvist, T et al, eds. Urbanization, Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities:
A Global Assessment (SpringerOpen, 2013).
doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7088-1_2.
6. Seto, K, Güneralp, B & Hutyra, LR. Global forecasts
of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on
biodiversity and carbon pools. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 109(40), 16083–16088
(2012) [online]. doi:10.1073/pnas.1211658109.
7. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, Population Division. World Urbanization
Prospects: The 2011 Revision, CD-ROM Edition (United
Nations, 2012).
Oscar Juarez / CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0
Today, half the world’s seven billion people live in cities and by 2030 there will be over one billion more urban residents.
