Sustainable Development Goals for City of Melbourne

In partnership with the City of Melbourne, the Connected Cities Lab is developing an evidence-based framework for localising and embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the City’s long-term strategic planning processes. Consisting of 17 Goals, 169 Targets and 231 unique indicators, the SDGs are an ambitious, overarching, globally agreed upon framework that aims to achieve worldwide sustainable development by the year 2030. The primarily research question for the project is “how can the UN SDGs be used to guide a city’s strategic planning while maintaining connectivity and comparability to other cities as well as the broader global sustainable development agenda?”.

The research methodology draws on global best practice in translating SDGs target and indicators for the local context, based on an extensive literature review and consultation led by the research team with leading global cities and peak multilateral bodies, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Phase one of the project included a 6-month internal SDG strategic environment assessment process that mapped existing City of Melbourne plans against the targets to ascertain current organisational SDG alignment. Procedures were developed iteratively through parallel project teams within both the University and the City.

Through 2021 the project will focus on 'localising' SDG targets and associated indicators, aligning the existing city database of more than 600 indicators with the SDG framework, which will form the basis of reporting and prioritisation within the City's overarching integrated planning framework going forward. This will include city-to-city comparability and sub-municipal precinct dissagregation.