Fair Cities: Imperatives in Meeting Global Sustainable Developmental Aspirations

Abstract

The approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 marked a shift in global values, introducing the idea that people everywhere should aspire to universally applicable development aspirations that ‘leave no one behind’(UN, 2015). The SDGs endorse the idea that making cities, as well as nations, work differently forms an integral part of achieving alternative, more sustainable, futures for this and subsequent generations. The hallmark of the post-2015 agenda is that it embraces a clear commitment to an integrated understanding of ecological, social and economic issues at multiple scales – including the hitherto largely ignored domain of cities. To this end the four threads of the new urban goal (Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, sustainable and resilient ) are interdependent and need to be considered as integrated aspirations, not isolated components of individual, city, national and global sustainable developmental strategies (SDSN, 2013). Operationalising this ambitious new post-2015 vision, even in poor and unequal urban contexts, requires a commitment to the socially protective value underlying the urban SDG along with making the way people (especially rich ones) live in cities more publicly accountable and less harmful to the planet. At the outset it is important to sketch what is meant by fairness in the urban context. Ideally being born a man or a woman, black or white, Muslim or Christian, gay or straight, able or disabled should make no difference to an individual’s or community’s life choices, but in contemporary cities this is rarely, if ever, the case (Plate 4.1). Similarly there is today no reason for there to be different versions of fairness for past, current and future generations of urban residents.

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