UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established in 2013 as a global set of goals for every country to work towards. February’s event was convened to explore their use in the UK and their relevance to the work of urban designers. Generally, the SDGs are not well-known or used in the UK. Indeed, urban designers working in developing countries will be more familiar with them.

Paul Reynolds of Urben opened the evening by giving some background on the goals, how they evolved from the Millennium Goals, and now provide a framework for every country in the world. Each country reports on progress against the goals annually with a commitment to achieving all 17 goals by 2030. Paul highlighted the value of looking at the UK’s national review of 2019 to help understand how the UK has interpreted the goals.

Chris Martin of Urban Movement then took the audience through each of the 17 goals. For each goal he showed the relevance to urban designers, providing examples of appropriate interventions and design principles, as well as links to particular case studies where each theme had been well considered. For example, under goal 3 on health, he highlighted interventions such as healthy foodscapes, 10mph speed restrictions and social spaces as all highly relevant to achieving the objectives under the health goal. Chris advocated the use of the goals as a kite-mark standard for designers.

Camilla Ween of Goldstein Ween Architects then gave some insights into working with the goals. She encouraged everyone to use the goals far more in their projects. She emphasised that they are the best guidance that we have, and that the goals are decent and ethical for both people and the planet. She also stressed that the focus should not necessarily be on doing more, but doing better. Camilla explained that the Urban Economy Forum was set up in October 2019 with the remit specifically to help cities deliver on the goals (ueforum.org) and that this is great repository of urban practice.

The discussion that followed was both reflective and proactive. Relatively few of the audience had actively used the goals in urban design work, but could see their significant potential. The platform created by the declarations of climate emergency was debated, as was the potential for the UK to become more aware of the goals as we become more globally focused. Much discussion was had around the scope for the Urban Design Group to create an open source framework using the SDGs and this is now being taken forward by conveners of the event. The hope is that such guidance could give real clarity on how to use the goals as an overarching framework in steering and assessing urban design.

Jane Manning, Director at Allies and Morrison, Urban Practitioners