The campaign for the inclusion of a specifically urban goal within the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was challenging. Numerous divergent interests were involved, while urban areas worldwide are also extremely heterogeneous. It was essential to minimize the number of targets and indicators while still capturing critical urban dimensions relevant to human development. It was also essential to test the targets and indicators. This paper reports the findings of a unique comparative pilot project involving co-production between researchers and local authority officials in five diverse secondary and intermediate cities: Bangalore (Bengaluru),

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and Dr. Govindan Raveendran for generously sharing their analysis of 1999-2009 NSS data on urban employment; Somik Lall and the World Bank team working on the India Urbanisation Review for sharing their results on India's economic geography and in particular the distribution of employment. Dr. Jyotsna Jha and Madhusudan B.V. of the Centre for Budgetary and Policy Studies, Bangalore provided intriguing data on Municipal Finance.

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