How Cities and Universities Approach the Sustainable Development Goals

Cities and universities need to react against the backdrop of various national and international policy initiatives, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the European Green Deal, as well as global pressure to tackle climate change and improve sustainability, equality, inclusion, health, and social development. Technology, political regulation, or financial mechanisms alone cannot drive sustainable development. Thinking, as well as behavior toward such a problem, must be changed. Universities, with their intellectual resources and their focus/mission on educating future leaders, play a key role in these challenges. All over the world and, in particular, in the cities where the majority of the world’s population lives, we are witnessing a coherent transition toward the sustainable development. Given their local autonomy, the national rules and guidelines by which they are guided, universities are implementing new curricula that highlight the SDGs involving all fields of knowledge: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), health and well-being, social sciences, and humanities. Furthermore, the rapid digital transformation of higher education institutions (HEIs), recently driven by a global health emergency, opens up new opportunities to promote a technology-enhanced approach to learning and teaching with the same level of excellence and effectiveness in virtual contexts as in the traditional context. It allows both to break down socio-cultural barriers and to expand potential beneficiaries. Blended learning is then reviewed in light of the SDGs. Therefore, the chapter, moving within such an urban context, underlines the innovation required by the higher education institutions to achieve the SDGs and presents how higher education institutions have reviewed their educational pathways to prepare new leaders, aware of the sustainability issues. Examples from case studies in some countries of the world are then examined.