Measuring sustainability of cities, 2019

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.