De Montfort University is a global academic hub chair and as such publishes a progress report on both the individual United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as well as a comprehensive report on all the goals.
Our 2025 report will show what the university has been doing in terms of research, teaching, partnerships and engagement in helping to meet those targets and raising awareness of the progress towards the 2030 aims.
This is the progress report for SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, which is the goal the university chairs for the United Nations Academic Impact. The full report on all the SDGs can be viewed here.
UN PROGRESS REPORT ON SDG 11 in 2025
AROUND 40% of the targets set for SDG 11 look set to be met by 2030, which is one of the highest across all the goals. However, a further 40% show only marginal progress and a further 20% have actually stagnated at their 2015 levels.
The UN warns in its 2025 progress report: “With rapid urbanisation and now over half the world’s population living in cities, housing affordability has reached crisis levels.
“Up to 3 billion people worldwide struggle to afford a place to live, and 1.12 billion live in slums or informal settlements without basic services.
“Climate threats intensify urban vulnerabilities. Cities are central to climate change efforts as urban populations grow, with rising temperatures and flood risks threatening billions. Open green spaces are disappearing, undermining climate resilience.”
MAJOR DMU NEWS ON SDG 11 IN 2025
DMU to lead United Nations Hub to help build better cities and communities
THE United Nations has chosen De Montfort University Leicester to lead a network aiming to build better cities and communities across the world.
The university has been made chair of the global Academic Impact hub for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 – sustainable cities and communities.
This means it will lead a team of other co-chair universities across the globe in helping to address issues, such as affordable housing, transport, and disaster resilience.
The university is the only one in the UK to be asked to become a Hub Chair by the United Nations Academic Impact initiative.
DMU launches £1.3m grassroots climate action project
DE MONTFORT University Leicester (DMU) has secured more than £1.3m in National Lottery funding to lead a major new community-driven climate initiative aimed at embedding sustainability in some of the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
The three-year scheme will bring together five grassroots organisations working with diverse communities across the city. Backed by the National Lottery Community Fund, the programme will establish a climate action hub at DMU, designed to support local people in cutting emissions, improving wellbeing and influencing climate policy.
Partner groups – Leicester Nirvana Football Club, Somali Development Services CIC, ZamZam Unlimited Possibilities CIC, Saffron Acres and One Roof Leicester – will receive funding to deliver their own climate-related projects, from community gardening and recycling drives to arts-based workshops and youth training.
Flooding in the UK: How better collaboration between communities and authorities can strengthen flood resilience
A LACK of connection between local government and residents is a barrier towards community resilience to flooding, says new research co-authored by a leading climate social-science specialist at DMU.
The UK faces recurring flood events, with 5.2 million homes now at risk from flooding and coastal erosion. This increasing risk highlights the importance of resilience planning, according to the report published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction by DMU’s Dr Ruth McKie and Dr Adam Aitken from the University of Salford.
DMU named among world's top universities for sustainable work
DMU is among the world’s best performing universities in helping to promote three of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
DMU was listed as =57th for SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, and =61st for both SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 13 Climate Action.
The ratings come from the Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings, which is the only measure of a university’s performance in the SDGs.
Cultural eXchanges returns as part of Riverside Festival
IT’S ONE of the highlights of the DMU calendar and this year Cultural eXchanges will have a new home at the Riverside Festival, as part of a new partnership with Leicester City Council.
Organised by the university’s Arts and Festivals Management students, Cultural eXchanges is a free festival that showcases the culture and achievements of both DMU’s and Leicester’s diverse community through a programme of live performances and activities.
For the first time in the event’s 24-year history that it will take place alongside the Riverside Festival, which last year attracted more than 75,000 people to the banks of the River Soar.
DMU embraces Leicester's diverse culture as part of Being Human festival programme
DMU will be celebrating the city’s rich cultural heritage through the power of creative writing, comic book art and the feeling of belonging as part of this year’s Being Human Festival.
The Being Human Festival supports researchers within the Humanities to produce events for public audiences that emphasise working with local communities to share ideas for mutual benefit.
DMU is one of five universities across the UK to be chosen as a Festival Hub for 2025. Each hub curates its own series of events centred around a specific societal theme, to which DMU has chosen Leicester: Community, Culture and Super-Diversity.
Easy access for local people to university libraries
UNIVERSITIES in Leicester and Leicestershire are opening up their libraries to public users.
A new partnership between De Montfort University, Leicester, (DMU), the University of Leicester (UoL) and Loughborough University (LU), together with local councils, means anyone aged 18+ and living in the city, county or Rutland will easily be able to access university libraries and borrow up to 10 books at a time.
Local people will now be able to become members of the university libraries for free, benefitting from access to new resources, study spaces, longer opening hours and increased availability of library services.
Early access to arts benefits parents as well as children, research shows
A PIONEERING research project led by DMU has shown that early access to arts improves not only children's wellbeing, but that of their parents.
Talent 25 is a 25-year study which charts the effect access to arts and culture has on babies as they grow into children, adolescents and adults.
Run in Leicester, the project, funded by Arts Council England, started in 2019, working with arts practitioners to put on classes across the city, offering families with babies the chance to learn dance, music, arts and crafts.
Student's Japanese research trip will strengthen Leicestershire UNESCO bid
TWO students from De Montfort University have travelled to Japan as part of a fact-finding mission to bolster Charnwood Forest’s application to become a UNESCO Global Geopark.
Becky Wilson and Natalia Stachowiak set off on 5,000-mile journey to the city of Nagaoka to learn about Japan’s cultural attitude towards sustainability, and explore the nearby Itoigawa UNESCO Global Geopark.
The pair were investigating how the country protects its geological heritage, animals and educates visitors about the region’s importance.
Their findings will now be fed into the National Forest’s application for Leicestershire’s Charnwood Forest to receive UNESCO Global Geopark status, which will be submitted later this year.
MAJOR DMU RESEARCH ON SDG 11 IN 2025
Architecture by Algorithm: A Stylistic and Empirical Enquiry into Parametricism
Emeje, Ucheojo (2025)
PARAMETRICISM has emerged as a dominant discourse in contemporary architecture, yet there is a persistent lack of consensus regarding its classification.
While some scholars argue that Parametricism represents a methodological approach driven by computational design and algorithmic processes, others maintain that it functions as a distinctive architectural style comparable to movements such as Modernism, Postmodernism, and Art Nouveau.
This study aims to critically investigate the defining components of an architectural style and to construct an empirical framework for classifying architectural movements.
Architecture by Algorithm: A Stylistic and Empirical Enquiry into Parametricism
An Expansion Too Far? The Contested Space of Environmental Policy Discourses
Mitchell, A. (2025)
EVIDENCE linking urban traffic emissions to human illness and death and as a source of climate change is incontrovertible.
In August 2023, the London ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) was expanded to include all 32 boroughs, a move that sparked a strong reaction especially from the right-wing media in the UK.
The policy rapidly became politicised and cleaved along ideological lines. This paper uses sampled articles from two politically opposing news media to examine the processes by which policy can become politicised. Using semantic tagging, four themes are analysed to highlight the dynamics by which politicisation is accomplished in the media.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17041955
Design Solutions for Cultural Sustainability: A Case Study of Vernacular Residential Interiors from Northern and Central Jordan
Al-Sheikh Salem, Aya Mutaz-Bellah A (2025)
THIS thesis applies a design ethnography approach to investigate how vernacular residential interiors in Northern and Central Jordan can contribute to the development of culturally sustainable interior design practices.
This study integrates fieldwork, visual documentation, and qualitative interviews to explore the lived experiences and material cultures associated with Jordanian homes constructed between the 1880s and 1940s.
It explores how traditional techniques, materials, and spatial configurations might influence modern interior design while maintaining cultural identity. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, incorporating fieldwork, site visits, interviews, focus groups, and secondary analysis of literature and archival materials.
Design Solutions for Cultural Sustainability: A Case Study of Vernacular Residential Interiors from Northern and Central Jordan
Prediction of Urban Growth and Sustainability Challenges Based on LULC Change: Case Study of Two Himalayan Metropolitan Cities
Rimal, B., Rijal, S. and Tiwary, A. (2025)
URBANIZATION, characterized by population growth and socioeconomic development, is a major driving factor of land use land cover (LULC) change.
A spatio-temporal understanding of land cover change is crucial, as it provides essential insights into the pattern of urban development.
This study conducted a longitudinal analysis of LULC change in order to evaluate the tradeoffs of urban growth and sustainability challenges in the Himalayan region.
https://doi.org/10.3390/land14081675
Enhancing Basic Education as a Foundation for Resilience and Sustainability in Low-Income Mega-Cities: the Case of Lagos, Nigeria
Okoya, S.A., Reeves, A., Younie, S. and Kolade, S. (2025)
THE provision of quality basic education is critical for building resilient and prosperous communities.
This is particularly needed in low-income settings, where enhancing education can develop human capital and the development of sustainable infrastructures for energy, the built environment, sanitation and more.
Nigeria as home to the world’s largest population of out-of-school children and the mega-city of Lagos State can shed light on the challenge of education provision in comparable cities across the globe.
10.5281/zenodo.17041983
Gender and the transition to Net Zero Transport
Budd, L. (2025)
THE United Nations has identified climate change and inequality (including gender inequality) as being two of the biggest challenges of the contemporary global era.
The global transport sector, which currently accounts for around a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, remains a long way from reaching its Net Zero target and largely fails to deliver gender inclusive services which recognise and meet the different mobility needs, priorities and services both between and within genders.
Gender and the transition to Net Zero Transport
A study of the temporal and spatial evolution trends of urban flood resilience in the Pearl River Delta, China
Xu, W., Han, P., Proverbs, D.G. and Guo, X. (2025)
IN VIEW of the increasing threat of flooding across the world and specifically the vulnerability of the Pearl River Delta region to these risks, this study undertakes a spatial and temporal evolution of flood risk in the region, including an assessment of urban flood resilience.
By combining the pressure-state-response model and the nature-economy-society-infrastructure framework, an urban flood resilience index system is constructed. The order relation analysis method, Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation method and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje evaluation method, they were then combined to quantify urban flood resilience and reveal the hierarchical relationships that exist between key factors.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBPA-11-2024-0228
Rediscovering cities through strategically decentralised urban green infrastructure: a case study of stormwater resilience
Tiwary, A., Heidrich, O. (2025)
THIS paper demonstrates that strategic application of ‘decentralised urban green infrastructure’ (DUGI) can alleviate flash flooding through adequate surface run off reduction using a combination of linear and dispersed components based on the perviousness of the sub catchments.
As a first step, an assessment framework comprising of the following three steps is introduced: Site selection; DUGI implementation strategy; Impact analysis (hydrological, socio-economic, etc.).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44327-025-00121-y
Rethinking end-of-life renewable energy assets as components of sustainable urban infrastructures
Tiwary, A., Olanrewaju, R. and Sung, K. (2025)
THIS study explores some plausible end-of-life decommissioning options for composite materials in renewable energy assets for developing low-cost public infrastructures.
This has been demonstrated through a case study for wind turbine blades.
The study presents outcomes of a survey that was deployed to understand consumer perception of the proposition to utilise the end-of-life wind turbine components as bus stop shelters.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17020604
Ecologies beyond the Human - Reimagining Nature-based Solutions through Relational and Multispecies Perspectives
Salvi, S., Reeves, A., Kerr, D. and Abuzeinab, A. (2025)
DESPITE growing interest in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and their promise to deliver social, economic, and environmental benefits for society, their human-centred utilitarian functionality raises questions about the adequacy and effectiveness of NbS.
Now, with two-thirds of the world's population projected to live in cities by 2050, this trend could potentially accelerate biodiversity loss and wildlife habitat destruction, ultimately weakening our resilience against the looming planetary ecocide.
10.5281/zenodo.17023592
Community resilience to flooding in the UK: A study of Matlock, Derbyshire
McKie, R.E and Aitken, A (2025)
THE United Kingdom has faced recurring floods since 2019, with 5.2 million homes at risk.
This has prompted the UK government to prioritise resilience planning in flood prone areas. This study focuses on community resilience in Matlock, Derbyshire, which has experienced intensified flooding since 2018.
Using qualitative interviews and a focus group, the research examines evidence of community resilience and the barriers to its development by focusing on community activities during flooding incidents.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105266
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities