The urban sustainable development goal: Indicators, complexity and the politics of measuring cities: Fid-Bau Portal

The urban sustainable development goal: Indicators, complexity and the politics of measuring cities

Klopp, Jacqueline M / Petretta, Danielle L

AbstractAs part of the post-2015 United Nations sustainable development agenda, the world has its first urban sustainable development goal (USDG) “to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. This paper provides an overview of the USDG and explores some of the difficulties around using this goal as a tool for improving cities. We argue that challenges emerge around selecting the indicators in the first place and also around the practical use of these indicators once selected. Three main practical problems of indicator use include 1) the poor availability of standardized, open and comparable data 2) the lack of strong data collection institutions at the city scale to support monitoring for the USDG and 3) “localization” - the uptake and context specific application of the goal by diverse actors in widely different cities. Adding to the complexity, the USDG conversation is taking place at the same time as the proliferation of a bewildering array of indicator systems at different scales. Prompted by technological change, debates on the “data revolution” and “smart city” also have direct bearing on the USDG. We argue that despite these many complexities and challenges, the USDG framework has the potential to encourage and guide needed reforms in our cities but only if anchored in local institutions and initiatives informed by open, inclusive and contextually sensitive data collection and monitoring.

Highlights•The world has its first stand alone Urban Sustainable Development Goal (USDG) as part of the post 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda.•The USDG is “to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” and has 11 targets, each with negotiated indicators.•Poor data, lack of strong city data collection capacities and localization are challenges for using the USDG as a tool to improve cities.•The “data revolution” and smart cities” movement present opportunities to address the data problem but also raise new challenges.•This goal can encourage reforms if anchored in local institutions and initiatives informed by open, inclusive data collection and monitoring.