Creating Inclusive Cities

Abstract

Measuring progress towards the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) will substantially depend on how countries are performing in the implementation of targets under the goals. One of the key challenges lies in designing sustainability indicators. For developing countries like India, the challenge is even more complex, given the continuous tension between quality of life aspirations and commitments towards sustainable development pathways. Thus, as countries aspire for achieving SDG-11, which seeks to create inclusive cities, they also need to ensure a mechanism that enables an evaluation and monitoring system for urban infrastructure and services that are aligned to the pillars and objectives of SDGs. This article presents an analysis of a set of indicators used in India and at the global level for five key urban sectors including housing. The analysis is aimed to provide an understanding on the adequacy of those indicators to the measure sustainability of infrastructure created and services provided. The article introduces a framework for this analysis which is derived from the principles of sustainable development. The research findings show that the indicators are more inclined towards a particular aspect, in each of the sectors. The article contributes to the sustainable development discourse by identifying aspects of sustainability that have been neglected and highlighting aspects that need to be focused, as India develops indicators to measure the sustainability of urban infrastructure.

Does citizens’ participation moderate the relationship between the built environment and their quality of life in Indian smart cities?

“…However, contrary to past studies, the results of this study failed to prove the association between the smart people dimension of a smart city and the citizen's quality of life. Bhattacharya et al (2015) found that inadequate citizen participation mechanisms, limited access to information and decision-making processes, disengagement of residents and initiatives not addressing community-specific needs and aspirations can lead to this outcome. Therefore, while examining the relationship between the interaction effect of smart people and citizen participation on the citizen's quality of life, the authors found a significant positive relationship.…”

“…The central focus of smart city initiatives is to prioritise ICT while aiming to draw individuals and investments to these urban areas. This, in turn, establishes a positive cycle of development and expansion, as noted by Bhattacharya et al (2015). Today, India’s urban population exceeds 35%, indicating that the country is keeping pace with urbanisation (Awasthi, 2021).…”

Fostering sustainable cities through additional SDG11-related indicators

“…This concept overcomes the idea of simply instituting local governments in favor of a broad territorial approach able to effectively involve all local actors. Thus, localization appears to be critical to strengthen the impacts of local governance on sustainable development and to enable comparability in each country of alignment with the pillars of the 2030 Agenda and relative performance in implementing the goals (Barnett and Parnell, 2016;Bhattacharya et al, 2016;Cavalli, 2018;. Localization of the SDGs is recognized as a means to implement the complex agenda (ASviS, 2020; ISTAT, 2020a), to overcome economic, social, and environmental challenges through coordination on state, regional, and local scales.…”

“…Indeed, it is widely accepted and reported that cities are responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, are the places where vulnerable populations and critical activities and infrastructure are concentrated from the perspective of climate change impacts and are affected by social challenges such as aggregation, poverty, and inequality (Bulkeley, 2019;Abdullah, 2021;EEA, 2021b). Moreover, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations General Assembly, 2015), the New Urban Agenda (United Nations, 2017), and the Green Deal (European Commission, 2019), highlight the centrality of cities and urban processes in sustainable development and green transition (Barnett and Parnell, 2016;Bhattacharya et al, 2016;. In 2015, the United Nations 2030 Agenda United Nation General Assembly, 2015) identified 17 SDGs aimed at measuring and monitoring the progress and conditions of sustainable development of countries by 169 targets and 231 indicators.…”

Identification and analysis of critical barriers for achieving sustainable development in India

“…), industrialization, which in turn leads to air pollution, techniques to improve air quality, minimizing carbon emissions, monitoring water discharge, provision for reducing the traffic flow, determining routing, predicting the number of accidents on roads, measuring traffic flow, formulating traffic strategy, etc. (Bhattacharya et al , 2016). Looking at the issues being highlighted, it is required to study human–environment systems at this stage so as to control the noise variables, thereby keeping the balance between socioeconomic conditions and environmental elements undertaken (Estoque and Murayama, 2014).…”