Winning the SDG battle in cities: how an integrated information ecosystem can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 sustainable development goals

Abstract

In 2015, the United Nations adopted an ambitious development agenda composed of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are to be reached by 2030. Beyond SDG 11 concerning the development of sustainable cities, many of the SDGs target activities falling within the responsibility of local governments. Thus, cities will play a leading role in the achievement of these goals, and we argue that the information systems (IS) community must be an active partner in these efforts. This paper aims to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs by developing a conceptual model to explain the role of IS in building smart sustainable cities and providing a framework of action for IS researchers and city managers. To this end, we conduct grounded theory studies of two green IS used by an internationally recognized smart city to manage water quality and green space. Based on these findings, we articulate a model explaining how an integrated information ecosystem enables the interactions between three interrelated spheres – administrative, political and sustainability – to support the development of smart sustainable cities. Moving from theory to practice, we use two real‐world scenarios to demonstrate the applicability of the model. Finally, we define an action framework outlining key actions for cities and suggest corresponding questions for future research. Beyond a simple call‐to‐action, this work provides a much‐needed foundation for future research and practice leading to a sustainable future for all.

Flamingos on a slackline: Companies' challenges of balancing the competing demands of handling customer information and privacy

“…It allows an open‐minded exploration of a phenomenon, avoids force‐fitting data into predefined theory, and lets meaningful concepts emerge from the data (eg, Birks, Fernández, Levina, & Nasirin, ; Charmaz, ; Urquhart & Fernández, ). In IS research, grounded theory is enjoying increasing popularity and has been applied in the contexts of IS outsourcing projects (Gregory, Beck, & Keil, ), enterprise systems (Strong & Volkoff, ), sustainable cities (Corbett & Mellouli, ), and many others. In the information privacy domain, a recent study used a grounded theory approach to explore intended and unintended consequences of privacy safeguards (Parks et al, ).…”

Applying the SDGs to cities: business as usual or new dawn?

“…In the analysis, these indicator sets are assessed in relation to the SDG indicator set, which is built on the experiences and strategies of previous goals and indicators, in particular the Millennium Development Goals [27,43,[83][84][85], acknowledging and addressing shortcomings and challenges such as the need to explicitly include all dimensions of sustainability, the need to set globally relevant goals but also to include and address local government. In particular, the recognition of the role of urban areas and local governments in facilitating sustainable development has led to the inclusion of a specific urban goal dedicated to cities and communities [43], even though many of the other 16 goals touch upon urban issues [3,41,48] and although many cities already have their own sustainability goals. The following section reviews and discusses which aspects have been most commonly monitored since the development of indicator sets for urban sustainable development started.…”

“…There is an increasing amount of research dealing with aspects regarding the use of the SDGs in cities [3,16,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Guides on localising the SDGs are starting to be available [48,49].…”

“…Several goals directly address the local level. Yet, a number of researchers point out the fact that cities and urban activities touch upon the majority of all 17 goals [3,41,43]. Recent research has highlighted a number of challenges when implementing the SDGs at local level.…”

An Empirical Study of the Assessment of Green Development in Beijing, China: Considering Resource Depletion, Environmental Damage and Ecological Benefits Simultaneously

“…However, it is debatable whether model cities are really as green as Liu (2009) claim [19], so many researchers are studying how to evaluate the level of sustainability of an area, which accords with how to assess its green development. Cities must develop and implement a new type of information system, i.e., an integrated information ecosystem, that supports a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to sustainable development across all three spheres (administrative, political, and sustainability) described in the conceptual model [20].…”