From the article: Included in the United Nations’ newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is goal No. 11, which calls world leaders to make cities and all “human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.”
It’s a goal that economists and urban academics have been pushing for, with some—like CityLab’s Richard Florida—arguing that it’s one of the most pressing issues of our time. For one thing, more than half of the world’s people currently live in cities. And by 2050, the World Health Organization predicts, more than 6.4 billion people will be city dwellers.
“The battle for the SDGs will be won or lost in cities,”says Homi Kharas, senior fellow and deputy director of the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution. Kharas was also part of the panel that advised the U.N. secretary general on the post-2015 development agenda. “Up until now, [cities] have just been left to their own devices to evolve as they see fit, but they’re evolving in a way that has very little planning and very little consideration to efficiency issues.”
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