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Abstract
The United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, signed in 2015 and backed-up with its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mentions cities as key players for evolving actively towards more sustainability. This underpins that living in the cities of the urban age is increasingly becoming the focus of sustainability discussions, which is particularly reflected in SDG 11 “Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. As urban sustainability strategies are playing a key role for the development of cities, this article sheds light on four cities’ sustainability strategies. The case studies highlight shortcomings, in terms of integrated visions, clear targets, and indicators in existing urban (sustainability) strategies. The article discusses these issues in light of an analytical framework, and stresses challenges and opportunities that SDG implementation involves.
Highlights
In the pursuit of balance between the needs of the present and those of future generations [1], it is important to acknowledge the reality of a predominantly urban future [2]
By applying the analytical framework to the four case cities’ individual key sustainability strategies under consideration, we aim to compare the processes they are undertaking in terms of urban sustainability development and identifying challenges, opportunities as well as barriers those cities face in terms of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation, with the identified key indicators used as the elements of comparison; those are summarized in Table 1 at the end of this section
It is notable that the four selected cities are so different in population size and administrative importance, they share many of the same struggles with sustainability strategizing
Summary
In the pursuit of balance between the needs of the present and those of future generations [1], it is important to acknowledge the reality of a predominantly urban future [2]. Thereby, cities present multiple challenges and hold a range of opportunities. Urban sustainability transformations (USTs) enter the discussion; USTs may be understood as pathways of cities to sustainable urban development, acknowledged as non-linear expressions of the complex interactions and consequences of a wide range of processes [4,5]. In accordance with the transformative UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and its SDGs, adopted in 2015, planned fundamental changes towards more stable and sustainable conditions are to be pursued by cities [6]. There are still many questions on how cities can fulfil these duties and high expectations, and what can be learned and taken up from former and/or still ongoing sustainability efforts such as Local Agenda 21 processes or climate-related initiatives
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