Making Our Cities Sustainable

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 aims to make cities 'inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable' by 2030'. While all of its targets are critical, the following ones too merit due attention: (1) Enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management; (2) Reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management; and (3) Provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities. In India, other than municipal waste management, we have not even started to track the rest of the aforementioned targets yet (https://bit.ly/3n5Jxtz). It is time that our state urban planners started treating SDG 11 targets and indicators as basic building blocks of city master plans, helping sustainable urban development in letter and spirit.