Sustainable Cities Identifying Solutions for Sustainable Urban Finance and Management

UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has stated that “cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost.” Attaining the SDGs and Paris Agreement goals requires more commitment to subnational and urban SDG financing along with deeper integration of the SDGs into local strategies, policies, targeted measures, and monitoring and governance systems. Cities also need new financial mechanisms and governance systems that can scale up effectively and quickly over the next 20 years.

In 2013, the SDSN played an important role in initiating the campaign for an urban Sustainable Development Goal, which was crucial for the inclusion of Goal 11 in the SDGs. Since then, the SDSN has actively supported the implementation of SDGs and the goals of the Paris Agreement in cities. It does so through its leadership of the Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, a high-level group of mayors, experts, city networks, and scholars working to catalyze SDG financing for cities, and through the SDG Transformation Center via partnerships with local governments and key stakeholders to produce robust research, comparative policy tracking, and monitoring data and science to accelerate transformations at the subnational level.