Sustainable Policies in a Latin-American Context

Abstract

The rapid process of urbanization in the world is generating several harmful impacts. This is especially true in a Latin American context, where cities have a high growth expansion rate in terms of population. Hence, it is necessary to take action to shift cities into resilient and sustainable environments. The present study aims to develop an existing sustainable assessment framework in the city of Cali, Colombia. The framework proposes new indicators to be integrated to the current assessment system for monitoring the progress of sustainability achieved in the city. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the development of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, and also generated the need to reassess the SDG Index indicators. COVID-19 has resulted in some cases to a lack of information and in others, to the formulation of policies to reverse regression in the fulfillment of the goals. The result is a framework consisting of 23 indicators to measure sustainability, which consider SDG11 indicators. The scope of this analysis is limited to assessment at urban scale, which facilitates the implementation of an evaluation framework and the modification of urbanistic regulations and policies.