Triggering Change: Sustainable Cities and Communities

City governance is vital for sustainable development goals and resource management and allocation as well as urban climate-related initiatives, as it is estimated that more people will reside in the urban areas in further years. As more people migrate to cities, the world steadily becomes more urbanised. The population of the cities accounts for 55% of the total population, and cities generate 85% of global gross domestic product and emit 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. SDG-11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, aims to ensure inclusive, safe, resilient, sustainable urban and human settlements by providing inexpensive transit solutions, decreasing urban sprawl, enhancing urban governance involvement, improving the protection of cultural assets and addressing urban resilience and climate change issues. This chapter presents the business models of 50 companies and use cases that employ emerging technologies and create value in SDG-11. We should highlight that one use case can be related to more than one SDG and it can make use of multiple emerging technologies.

The International Publishers Association (IPA) is the world’s largest federation of national, regional and specialist publishers’ associations. This interactive SDG site showcases diverse examples of how publishers are both improving sustainable business practices and act as agents of change in critical areas such as education, equality and justice.

SDG 11 Synthesis Report: High Level Political Forum 2023; The present report shows that for most of the indicators where data is available, we are far from the targets set in 2015

This publication advocates a “cities-based” approach to sustainable development which recognizes the central and integrating role that cities and urban living play in developing sustainability. It highlights that, similarly to the financial crisis of 2008, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has shown that different cities have different capacities to cope with crises.