Simon, D., & Arfvidsson, H. (2015). Pilot project to test potential targets and indicators for the urban sustainable development goal 11 - final report. Mistra Urban Futures, 7 July 2015.
The evidence collected during this pilot project has demonstrated unequivocally the importance of having undertaken live testing of the draft targets and indicators for Goal 11, the urban SDG, in a set of diverse secondary and intermediate cities. Despite the vast experience in different fields of the Campaign membership and UN system statisticians, the extensive and detailed work of the Campaign has hitherto been undertaken in isolation from the daily pressures and realities of urban local authorities and other agencies that will be required to collect, compute and report on the indicators.
Compared with world or megacities, for instance, the five cities which formed the testbeds for this study, namely Bangalore, Cape Town, Gothenburg, Greater Manchester, and Kisumu, constitute a reasonably representative sample of the multitude of urban areas worldwide that will be faced with the new challenges of annual urban SDG reporting from 2016. The precise extent of such responsibilities will vary by country in terms of how national reporting agencies allocate roles but the specifically urban focus of most of the indicators makes some urban involvement inescapable. Indeed, this is part of the novelty and added value of Goal 11.
