Sustainable Cities and Communities
As dense hubs of global activity, cities present some of the greatest challenges among the Sustainable Development Goals. From housing, public health, and employment to natural resource consumption and transportation, achieving the SDGs will hinge on urban planning initiated now. By 2030, 60 per cent of the global population will reside in cities.
The issue of sustainable urbanisation interlinks with many of UNU’s focus areas ranging from governance, migration, water, and health to economic development, waste, climate change, and vulnerability to natural hazards. Our goal is to avoid the past tendency to treat these issues as discrete urban problems, and instead undertake interdisciplinary, policy-relevant analyses to find solutions with co-benefits — feasible options by which urban populations can tackle interconnected challenges.