Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

What Goal 11 asks for

Goal 11 treats the city as a system that either works for everyone in it or does not. Its first target is access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, together with the upgrading of slums; the word upgrading matters, because the target assumes informal settlements will be improved in place rather than cleared. The second is safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport for all, with road safety named explicitly and with particular attention to women, children, older people and persons with disabilities. A third target is about how cities are planned at all: inclusive and sustainable urbanisation with participatory, integrated settlement planning, which is a governance commitment rather than an infrastructure one.

The remaining targets cover the pressures a growing city creates. There is a target on protecting cultural and natural heritage; one on cutting deaths, affected people and economic losses from disasters, with a focus on protecting poor and vulnerable residents; one on reducing cities' per capita environmental impact, naming air quality and municipal waste management; and one on universal access to safe, inclusive, accessible green and public spaces. Two implementation targets ask for stronger links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas through national and regional planning, and for cities to adopt integrated plans for inclusion, resource efficiency, climate mitigation and adaptation and disaster risk management in line with the Sendai Framework.

Goal 11 in India

India's urban programmes are organised around housing, services and city systems. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Urban has been running since 25 June 2015; the government reported over 98.10 lakh houses completed between 2015 and 2026, 1.25 crore sanctioned as of May 2026, and around 96 per cent of houses under its second phase registered in a woman's name, which is a direct route into women's asset ownership. The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, launched the same day and extended as AMRUT 2.0 from 1 October 2021, funds water supply, sewerage and septage management, parks and water body rejuvenation across urban local bodies. The Smart Cities Mission, also launched on 25 June 2015 across 100 cities, funded area-based infrastructure and service projects. Swachh Bharat Mission - Urban handles sanitation and municipal solid waste, and its grading system is worth understanding: ODF means no open defecation, ODF+ adds functioning solid and liquid waste management, and ODF++ additionally requires that faecal sludge and sewage are safely treated rather than discharged into drains or water bodies. Metro rail has expanded from 248 km in 2014 to 1,013 km across 23 cities by May 2025.

None of that resolves the questions Goal 11 asks about who the city works for. Large parts of urban India live in tenure-insecure settlements, work informally, and are the least protected against heat, flooding and eviction, and the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census counted roughly 40 million households nationwide lacking adequate housing or basic household facilities. Non-profits in Indian cities typically work on settlement-level water, sanitation and waste, tenure security and resettlement rights, education and childcare for children in construction and migrant families, waste-picker collectives and occupational safety, urban homelessness and shelters, street vendor livelihoods, air quality and heat action, and the restoration of lakes, wetlands and public open space that municipal budgets rarely reach.