UN Sustainable Development Goals Target 11: Urban Indicators Pilot – City of Cape Town
This pilot study sought to test the proposed indicators for Goal 11 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals that succeed the Millennium Development Goals. Goal 11 marks the first explicit urban goal: To Make Cities and Human Settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The ACC was appointed by Mistra Urban Futures to test the Goal 11 indicators in Cape Town and partnered with Palmer Development Group (PDG) and the City of Cape Town (CCT) to do so, as part of a larger pilot process in five cities worldwide. The pilot tested each proposed indicator against four parameters: data availability, measurability, utility and custodianship. It used an indicator specification format with which PDG engaged with a CCT team, who in turn engaged with internal CCT stakeholders on the feasibility and usefulness of the indicators and collected data from them for analysis. The findings show that there are limitations regarding the informal context that characterises significant facets of the CCT, the type of data that the CCT has at its disposal and the regularity with which it is able to access household and population data. However, the majority of primary indicators are measurable and valuable and with improved collaboration with Statistics South Africa these will be increasingly measurable.
Across the five cities it emerged that there are great gaps and concerns, in terms of universality, common international standards and coherence of reporting mechanisms. The pilot also demonstrated the tension in striking a balance between reducing the number of indicators and increasing the policy relevance. The CCT found that being part of the research pilot was valuable for the CCT in a range of ways including internal CCT learnings and the direct influence on future CCT indicator work; CCT’s access to current indicator thinking, processes, tools and resources, as well as the insights for CCT in terms of urban sustainable development priorities and challenges and how these are being managed by other cities.
The pilot study has demonstrated the importance of having undertaken live testing of the draft targets and indicators for Goal 11 in a set of diverse secondary and intermediate cities. If the urban SDG is to prove to be a useful tool to encourage local and national authorities alike to make positive investments in the various components of urban sustainability transitions as its proponents and developers intend, then it is vital that it should prove widely relevant, acceptable and practicable. Key recommendations from the final report to achieve these aims will be discussed.
This seminar will be presented by the following members of the pilot study team:
Nishendra Moodley was the PDG project lead and lead researcher for the pilot in Cape Town. He is a director of PDG and Chairperson of its Board.
Carol Wright was the City Lead of the USDG pilot, and co-ordinated the inputs from the City of Cape Town. Carol is Manager of Development Information in the City of Cape Town.
Natasha Primo provided the alignment to the current CCT indicator and related work and active links to the City’s indicator working group which she leads. Natasha is the Head: Policy and Research in the DI&GIS Department of the CCT.
Helen Arfvidsson has been the lead researcher for the Mistra Urban Futures’ Pilot Project to test potential targets and indicators for the urban sustainable development goal 11 across 5 cities.