According to the OECD, metropolitan areas are defined as a population between 500 000 and 1.5 million people. For instance, the region of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has several such metropolitan areas which are often agglomerations of different separate cities and towns which became integrated into a larger size urban areas. These separate areas often retain some form of autonomy making it very challenging for the larger metropolitan agglomeration to coordinate sustainable growth of its infrastructure, personal mobility, safeguarding food security, managing waste and social development such as education, health, security and housing rules and regulations. This side-event focuses on the implementation of SDG 11 at a metropolitan scale which goes beyond the traditional VLR (Voluntary Local Review) reporting and introduces instead a VMR (Voluntary Metropolitan Review).

Concept Note

This concept note explains the urgent need to address the specific challenges of SDG implementation of metropolitan areas and to complement the VNR and VLR with a VMR (Voluntary Metropolitan Review.

Case examples of metropolitan urban areas and their implementation of the SDGs

CSEND organised a side-event during the UNECE SDG Forum 2023. Representatives from Barcelona, Geneva and Strasbourg gave overviews of SDG implementation of their metropolitan area and invited the audience to brainstorm how they might have solved some of the challenges of SDG implementation.

SUMMARY OF SIDE-EVENT/UNECE SDG FORUM 2023

Contributing to achieving SDG 11 of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by imagining the way forward for metropolitan areas characterized by the co-existence of different territorial areas with their own political mandate and institutions

The 2030 Agenda addresses the future of cities and human settlement. Specifically, SDG 11: Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. This event addressed the following target:

SDG 11.a: Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning.

This side event sought to inform the audience about the success and challenges in implementing the SDGs of three cities – Barcelona, Geneva, and Strasbourg.

Speakers:

Dr. Raymond Saner, Director CSEND, Geneva & Titular Professor em, University of Basel

Bàrbara Pons-Giner, Architect, PhD in Urban Planning, Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda

Barcelona City Council & Ramon Canal Oliveras, Director, Technical Cabinet, 2030 Agenda
Panos Mantziaras, Director Braillard Foundation for Architecture, Geneva

Yves Zimmerman, Project Director, City and Eurométropole, Strasbourg

Summary

Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu, CSEND, Geneva

The role of governance and innovation policy can help cities and countries achieve the goal of creating smart cities and sustainable human development. In view of challenges that countries and citizens face when attempting to create sustainable smart cities, it is of paramount importance to take into consideration how the 2030 agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals can help support the creation of sustainable smart cities. One of the ways to help countries and cities achieve sustainable development is the ability to measure whether sustainability has been achieved and if not, what can be undertaken to re-align policy and implementation with the 2030 agenda. This CSEND statement relies on information provided by the voluntary local reviews presented at the 2019 High Level Political Forum. In total there were 22 VLRs presented: 2 from North America, 6 from Asia and the Pacific, 8 from Europe, 6 from GRULAC. The cities in the UNECE region are New York City, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Bristol, and Mannheim. Each of these cities produced an extensive voluntary local review that detailed the SDGs they chose to focus on, the ways in which they met SDG indicators, evidence of progress in the goal areas and explanations of future plans.

For more information see

CSEND statement by R. Saner, L. Yiu and A. Ajith on the importance of measuring sustainability of cities.

In view of challenges that countries and citizens face when attempting to create sustainable smart cities, it is of paramount importance to take into consideration how the 2030 agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals can help support the creation of sustainable smart cities. Good governance and innovation policy can help cities and countries achieve the goal of creating smart cities and sustainable human development. One of the ways to help countries and cities achieve sustainable development is the ability to measure whether sustainability has been achieved and if not, what can be undertaken to re-align policy and implementation with the 2030 agenda. The CSEND statement provides a comparative analysis of SDG implementation of cities based on the Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR) presented by cities during the HLPF 2019 in New York.

The statement was part of the documentation UNECE’Twelfth session of the Team of Specialists on Innovation and Competitiveness Policies, Geneva, 5 – 6 December 2019

https://www.unece.org/index.php?id=52275

Article

The international agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals signed in 2015 specify that the SDGs will be implemented by national governments and that countries should also embark on SDG implementation at subnational level such as municipalities or provinces. This paper focuses on SDG implementation at local authority level of large cities and explores the needed competences and capacities in goal attainment. Within the time span 2015-2030, changes of political leadership will be inevitable and hence continuity and policy coherence will be essential to make SDG implementation successful by 2030. The 17 SDGs are interdependent goals requiring effective inter-ministerial policy coordination and equally effective consultation with the private sector and civil society stakeholders. Developing effective mechanisms of coordination and consultations takes time and can be easily overturned subsequent to a change of government and administrators putting the sustainability of the society and gains from SDG implementation at risk. The authors describe the main features of the SDGs and of urban development and suggest that an application of ISO 18091 could be a practical method to ensure continuity of administrative performance needed to sustain implementation of the SDGs at local authority level.

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