Urban Sustainability and the SDGs: A Nordic Perspective and Opportunity for Integration

Abstract

Urban sustainability has been used to cover multiple aspects of urban development. Terms related to sustainability have been generously used to advance ubiquitous and hard-to-measure targets not least in response to global and national sustainable development (SD) targets. However, ad-hoc and governed urbanization processes differ. In addition to different development pathways, local differences in interpretation of sustainability exist. This renders a global urban sustainability discourse disconnected from local practice. In this paper we focus on the Nordic cities, combining what is known about the similarities of the cities and societies, their recent development and highlights. Comparing with the global sustainability discourse spearheaded by the UN development goals (SDGs) we analyze the potential links in Nordic urban development to the global aims, as well as the local action taken via ex-ante review and assessment. With increasing demands for transformative change in urban planning and other institutions due to environmental, social and economic challenges, we demonstrate where strengthening the urban sustainability agenda is particularly needed. Findings show surprisingly little focus on socially just and cross-thematic development pre-SDGs, while it is expected that the dominant technocratic focus will give way to these other aspects necessary to address sustainability under the current SDG framework.

Towards an eco-welfare state: Enabling factors for transformative eco-social initiatives

“…Social and health care provisioning in a welfare mix with public, private and civil society actors requires public procurement. Given that local governments have relatively independent powers to enhance sustainability (Terama et al, 2019), and that approximately €47 billion are spent annually on public procurement in Finland (Merisalo et al, 2021), this procurement is viewed as a significant lever to reduce the environmental impact of public service provision and shape markets for innovative environmentally friendly products and services. Promotion of public procurement aiming to achieve sustainability and innovation-related goals is a policy area in which Finland has established itself in a leadership agents' to support public procurement units at the regional level.…”

Localizing SDGs: the case of city planning in Malmö

“…The challenges of localizing the SDGs to the city level have been highlighted by several scholars (e.g., Graute, 2016;Weymouth and Hartz-Karp, 2018;Terama et al, 2019;Valencia, 2019). One process often referred to is the process of reporting, assessments and benchmarking on sustainability (Arfvidsson et al, 2017;Patel et al, 2017;Kaviti Musango et al, 2020;Cellura et al, 2022), replacing sustainable indicator systems such as the UN Habitat Urban indicators and the EU's Urban sustainability indicators.…”

“…This subsequently implies a need to complement the SDGs with additional targets to match local needs. The literature on localizing the SDGs also provides insights into challenges related to the use of sustainability indicators to support policy design and learning (Wilson et al, 2007;Huang et al, 2015;Arslan et al, 2016;Pupphachai and Zuidema, 2017;Thomas et al, 2021) as well as into governance (McCormick et al, 2013;Arslan et al, 2016;Barnett and Parnell, 2016;Arfvidsson et al, 2017;Lund, 2019;Terama et al, 2019).…”

Travels and Trials of Climate Knowledge in Finnish Municipalities

“…Knowledge of climate change and its acuteness is hardly lack-ing; indeed, climate information that can be used across various scales and institutions abounds. Yet much of local climate governance and sustainability centres on how different indicators and 'best practices' are followed, how this affects performance, which policy instruments are effective, and how climate goals are implemented locally (Hsu et al, 2020;Terama et al, 2019). Knowledge is seen to travel from top to bottom, from abstract to concrete, and from scientific research to international organisations, states, and finally municipalities.…”

“…Such a technocratic, top-down process alone does not suffice: it is not enough to come up with the right kind of policies and indicators (e.g. Knox, 2020;Terama et al, 2019). A particularly pressing problem of taking on climate change adaptation and mitigation lies rather in 'the transfer, receipt and integration of knowledge across participants' (Weber and Khademian, 2008: 334).…”