The eleventh global goal is to make cities sustainable and safe and encourage responsible urbanization. While reaching this goal includes overcoming numerous challenges, the global community can still achieve its goal set out until 2030. Reducing the environmental impact of cities and making urban habit more accessible and enjoyable will prepare our cities for the future.
Video Transcript
Inequality touches every nation and every facet of life in some way, shape, or form - between genders, between races - but one area that doesn’t always receive as much popular attention is the city and city life, which can be very polarising and unsustainable.
As such, the United Nation’s eleventh Sustainable Development Goal is to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Reforms carried out under SDG 11 will focus primarily on the two related areas of making cities better for residents and making cities better for the environment.
To improve cities for residents, more attention needs to be paid to the dire situation of slums in most of the world’s metropolitan areas. Upgrading slums, ensuring affordable housing, and basic services - like water and electricity - as well as developing or improving public transport systems, and making cities and city services more accessible for marginalised groups like women, children, and those with disabilities will be very important to making cities sustainable, and enjoyable places. Also to this end, SDG 11 hopes to have safe accessible green areas and public spaces, like parks, for every city dweller, to bring more humanity back into city life. Protecting heritage sites, cultural and natural, is also related to this aim, and is important in creating space that people feel attached to and want to take care of.
Encouraging plans for sustainable urbanization and setting up long-lasting sustainable practices will make it easier for cities to grow over time.
It is so easy for people to slip under the radar and fall into dangerous situations in cities, so another goal of SDG 11 is to substantially lower the death rate in cities related to various different forms of incidents.
Specifically environmentally focused, cities are some of the biggest polluters, so another aim of SDG 11 would be to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of cities, paying special attention to air quality and waste management.
Increasing the number of human settlements and encouraging positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas, put all areas on the right path toward sustainable urbanization. Allowing for extra aid to developing countries will also be vital in meeting the aims of SDG 11.
Progress towards SDG 11 is not the most encouraging. The numbers say that the percentage of urban populations relegated to the slums have fallen 20 percentage points since 1990, but at the same time the urban population has grown rapidly, meaning that in absolute terms approximately the same number of people still live in slums.
Urban areas are also growing at a rate 1.28 times faster than their populations, which has led to unsustainable resources use, something that needs more regulation to ensure that the negative repercussions do not spread too far.
Most cities do now have access to green areas and public spaces, albeit limited, but 9 out of 10 people in urban areas are still breathing air considered too polluted by the World Health Organisation and at least 2 billion people still don’t have access to adequate waste management services.
It is true however that, as of 2019, 150 nations have drawn up sustainable urbanization plans, and at least half of these nations are in the process of implementing their plans, which is an important part of SDG 11.
Renewed efforts will be needed to reach all the aims of SDG11 and create pleasant and sustainable cities by 2030.