ABSTRACT
Urban sustainability and the transition required to achieve SDG 11 are daunting as they call for massive financial investment to improve infrastructure and public amenities and present the enormous challenge of formulating appropriate public programmes, effective regulation and building of governance capabilities. To explore some of the drivers and obstructers of good governance, this chapter presents national experience from three countries (Brazil, India and Japan), each of which reflects the interaction of different scales of governance (local, regional national) and a different type of problem (waste, sanitation and disaster resilience) to capture information about the challenges of addressing SDG 11 Targets 11.5, 11.6 and 11.B. Key findings include the difficulty of small municipalities being able to afford and compete for technical resources, the value of competition and the need for cooperation through the hierarchy of governance from local communities to the national government.
