As a global governance framework, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators embody a productive tension. The indicators must be comparable across nations to promote coordinated action among UN Member States, whilst also representing the views and needs of local communities to mobilise local action. The various stakeholders in this multi-level socio-technical structure have different information needs and technological capacities. If left unexamined, these tensions could reinforce inequalities by “baking them” into the indicator frameworks, which rely on an increasing variety of data sources. A reflective engagement can encourage productive and transformative dialogues.

This study attempts the latter by tracing the SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) indicator framework’s journey from the global (United Nations) level to the national (Colombia’s National Statistics Office), then to the city level (Medellín) and three neighbourhoods on Medellín’s periphery. It demonstrates how each governance stage reinterprets the same targets according to its own data mandate, thus highlighting scalar tensions and the potential for methodological dialogue.

Cities, positioned between upward reporting obligations and neighbourhood accountability, are emerging as testbeds for indicator localisation and data practices. Building on the concept of the city level as a testbed for innovative data practices in sustainability and resilience indicator frameworks, the second part of the talk offers insights from two applied research projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that focused on participatory data collection with communities living in urban peripheries.

Trade-offs identified here relate to data completeness, continuity of collection, conceptual consistency, dialogicity (in the Freirean sense), and power/empowerment. By foregrounding these frictions and trade-offs, rather than treating them as problems which need to be resolved, the talk invites reflection on the choices required when integrating citizen data into official monitoring.

Philipp Ulbrich is a political geographer with extensive experience in critical data studies, urban and economic development. He works in applied research and policy evaluation with a focus on Latin America.

Philipp Ulbrich @ LinkedIn