The Globalisation of Urban Governance ― Legal Perspectives on Sustainable Development Goal 11

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly in 2015 represents the latest attempt by the international community to live up to the challenges of a planet that is out of control. Sustainable Development Goal 11 envisages inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities around the world by the year 2030. This globally agreed vision is part of a trend in international policy toward good urban governance, and now awaits implementation. Fourteen original contributions collectively examine how this global vision has been developed on a conceptual level, how it plays out in various areas of (global) urban governance and how it is implemented in varying local contexts. The overarching hypothesis presented herein is that SDG 11 proves that local governance is recognised as an autonomous yet interrelated part of the global pursuit of sustainable development. The volume analyses three core questions: How have the normative ideals set forth in SDG 11 been developed? What are the meanings of the four sub-goals of SDG 11 and how do these relate to each other? What does SDG 11 imply for urban law and governance in the domestic context and how are local processes of urban governance internationalised?

The Globalisation of Urban Governance makes an important scholarly contribution by linking the narrative on globalisation of good urban governance in various social sciences with legal discourse. It considers global governance and connects the existing debate about cities and their place in global governance with some of the most pertinent questions that lawyers face today.

Helmut Philipp Aust is Professor of Law at the Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Previously, he was a Senior Research Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin (2011-2016). He was also Visiting Professor at the University of Konstanz (2016) and Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre of International Law, University of Cambridge (2008) and at the Institute of International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School (2014/2015). His research interests lie in the fields of public international law and comparative constitutional law. He is the author of Complicity and the Law of State Responsibility (2011) and of Das Recht der globalen Stadt (2017). He has also co-edited the collection The Interpretation of International Law by Domestic Courts (with Georg Nolte, 2016). Since May 2017, he is Co-Chairman of a new study group of the International Law Association on "The Role of Cities in International Law".

Anel du Plessis is Professor of Law and the SARChI Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability (CLES) at the North-West University (NWU), South Africa. She is author and editor of various publications, including Environmental Law and Local Government in South Africa (2015) and Fulfilment of South Africa’s Constitutional Environmental Right in the Local Government Sphere (2009). Her research focuses environmental-, local government and different aspects of constitutional law and governance. She is member of the Executive Committee of the Environmental Law Association of South Africa, project coordinator for a long-standing local government capacity building project of the NWU and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and serves on the Teaching Committee of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. She is a rated researcher of South Africa’s National Research Foundation and an alumnus of the scholarship programmes of the DAAD, Fulbright and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.