Role of Urban and Rural Communities in Sustainable Built Environment

With 8.1 billion people on the planet, currently about 60% live in urban centers and 40% live in rural settings. However, due to a clear disparity in living standards and also perhaps the availability of resources generally, as predicted by the United Nations, the urban population is increasing to reach 68% by 2050. This increasing trend of urbanisation is further escalated due to the traditional way of perceiving the urban-rural divide and worldwide efforts towards closing the gap. Demand for housing and infrastructure resulting from the rapid urbanization not only adds to the current carbon footprints but also hinders necessary innovations for sustainable development. Countering the current practices of traditional development models and rapid urbanisations for closing the urban-rural gap, the smart villages research program at the University of Melbourne offers an evidence-based alternative by promoting urban-rural share and context-specific development. Rather than extending the traditional brick & mortar-based development practices in the urbanization spree, value-based and purpose-built development of smart villages provides a significant new opportunity for innovative development and upgrading of the 40% rural community globally. While the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are at the core of the smart villages development, this paper highlights how the data-driven context-specific planning and execution of the SDGs support rural communities to take control of their localised development and steer towards establishing resilient societies with clear distinctions in the rural lifestyle. Setting a clear point of departure, this paper demonstrates with conviction the unique roles and responsibilities of the urban-rural communities in shaping the sustainable built environment and contributing to the global war against climate change and global temperature rise.