Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires creating cities that are more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable. Until 2007, a majority of the global population was rural. Today, however, a majority of people live in cities—and the proportion continues to rise. By 2030, the UN estimates that the world’s urban population will exceed 5 billion.

Many people migrate to cities in search for a better life. To ensure that this remains possible, the UN’s eleventh Sustainable Development Goal aspires to reach the following targets:

• Ensuring adequate and affordable housing for city-dwellers—including reducing the population of people living in slums.
• Expanding public transport and improving road safety.
• Reducing the losses and deaths caused by natural disasters by improving resiliency and implementing disaster risk reduction strategies.
• Providing access to green spaces, public spaces, and sites of cultural heritage to improve the quality of life for urban residents.
• Addressing the health consequences of poor air quality and waste management in urban areas.

__SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM__

The Stories section illustrates solutions working to make cities more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable. Two of the stories focus on public transportation. Learn about how cities from Los Angeles to Shanghai are leveraging public transportation in their urban planning to reduce the environmental impact of sprawl. Anoush Darabi writes about the strategies that helped Medellín, Colombia, make its cable car infrastructure a success for residents of the city’s barrios. The article also explains why a similar strategy had very different results in Rio de Janeiro.

__BABSON SOLUTIONS__

The Link section showcases members of the Babson College community who are using their entrepreneurial mindset for good. Watch how Sebastian Gomez Puerto MBA '14 is changing how we travel in cities with SunVessel.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE STORIES IN THE SOLUTIONS STORY TRACKER ON SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES.

1. How do we define distinctions between urban and rural? What are the challenges in using these distinctions?
2. What is green infrastructure? Define green infrastructure and list some of benefits, using specific examples, paying attention to categories of economic development, climate resilience, and public health.
3. Explain the differences in the implementation of public transportation Medellin and Rio de Janeiro—what led to success, what led to failure? 
4. After reading the story about the women of Ahmedabad, discuss the significance of enrolling local activists in urban planning projects. How can city planners, policymakers, developers, and residents reach agreements for how to use space in cities?
5. Examine at least two other SDGs and their targets alongside those of Goal 11. Then, either explain or illustrate how the targets of these SDGs relate to or influence one another.
6. Choose an Issue Area or a Success Factor related to Goal 11. Then, create a collection and select at least 4 (or more) stories from the Solution’s Story Tracker that relate to your topic. If working with groups, each group can present on the issues and solutions they found most compelling.

1. In the American context, rural is most commonly defined by what it is not. According to the US Census Bureau, “rural” constitutes anything outside of an urban area (areas with 50,000 or more residents) or an urban cluster (areas with more than 2,500 residents). Counties fall into the following categories: mostly urban (with 49 percent or less of the residents living in rural areas), mostly rural (50-99 percent rural), and counties that are completely rural (100 percent). The common perception of the rural-urban divide as binary flattens these definitions and elides the complexity of the issues. Introduce students to other metrics, such as the designation of “peri-urban” areas to refer to areas immediately adjacent to urban areas, used especially in developing countries.
2. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, green infrastructure “is an approach to wet weather management that uses soils and vegetation to utilise, enhance and/or mimic the natural hydrological cycle processes of infiltration, evapotranspiration and reuse." However, green infrastructure can also refer to a variety of planned projects to build ecological resilience or ecological connectivity in urban, settled areas. In addition to adding resilience to weather events and the reduction of sewage overflow, accessible green spaces have a positive effect on mental wellbeing, according to the WHO.
3. After reading the article, introduce students to the concept of cooperative design (also called co-design, or participatory design). This is an approach that enrolls multiple stakeholders in the design of a project to ensure that the needs of all parties involved are met and satisfied. In the case of Rio de Janeiro in Anoush Darabi’s article, there appears to have been little input from the communities served by the cable cars. Challenges remained, including a lack of basic sanitation, and inconvenient locations of cable car hubs. This led to a poor outcome for the project. 
4. The concept of participatory or co-design also applies to housing development. Community activists, as is the case with the women of Ahmedabad, are essential in bringing the voices of those serve to the table. To ensure equitable use of land and other urban resources, city planners, policymakers, and private developers must make planning more transparent and inclusive. You can find other stories about community activism and public engagement in public works projects in the Story Tracker—consider having students build a collection around the issue of participatory design in urban planning and the value of having local activists bringing their voices to the table. This report from an SDG leadership forum by private sector analysts also gives valuable insight into the barriers to sustainable development posed by public apathy and disengagement. (p. 19)
5. Answers will vary by student. Goal 11 especially relates to the targets of Goals 1 (no poverty), 3 (health and wellbeing), 4 (quality education), 6 (clean water and sanitation), 8 (decent work and economic growth), 10 (reduced inequalities).
6. Answers will vary—for more on creating collections, click here. For more on Success Factors, click here.