IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i15p8136-d598366.html

From Sustainable Development Goals to Sustainable Cities: A Social Media Analysis for Policy-Making Decision

Author

Listed:
  • Amal Marzouki

    (Department of Organizational Information Systems, Faculty of Business Administration, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada)

  • Arbi Chouikh

    (Department of Organizational Information Systems, Faculty of Business Administration, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada)

  • Sehl Mellouli

    (Department of Organizational Information Systems, Faculty of Business Administration, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada)

  • Rim Haddad

    (Higher School of Communications of Tunis, Université de Carthage, Ariana 2083, Tunisia)

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) adopted the seventeen “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) in early September 2015. One of these goals is SDG 11, which refers to the sustainable cities and communities. In this context, local governments face the challenge of aligning with this objective. As a result, they are increasing outreach to their organizational boundaries to involve citizens in policy making and strategy development, continually listening to citizens’ voices. One of the methods citizens use to express themselves is social media. This paper will emphasize social media platforms and specially Twitter to explore the public discourse about cities in the context of SDG 11. We applied descriptive quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyze the tweets that include terms and hashtags referring to the SDG 11. The data analysis process is composed of three major procedures: 1-Engagement analysis, 2-Trends based analysis and 3-Data Insights. Our results show that: 1-the COVID’19 pandemic negatively impacted users engagement towards SDG 11, 2-new technologies such AI and IoT are gaining more importance to help cities reach SDG 11, and 3-the SDGs are related and one SDG can impact other SDGs.

Suggested Citation

  • Amal Marzouki & Arbi Chouikh & Sehl Mellouli & Rim Haddad, 2021. "From Sustainable Development Goals to Sustainable Cities: A Social Media Analysis for Policy-Making Decision," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-21, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:15:p:8136-:d:598366
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8136/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8136/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ladislav Pilař & Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská & Jana Pitrová & Igor Krejčí & Ivana Tichá & Martina Chalupová, 2019. "Twitter Analysis of Global Communication in the Field of Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-16, December.
    2. Arnout B. Boot & Erik Tjong Kim Sang & Katinka Dijkstra & Rolf A. Zwaan, 2019. "How character limit affects language usage in tweets," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, December.
    3. Dick, Eva, 2016. "Urban governance for sustainable global development: from the SDGs to the New Urban Agenda," Briefing Papers 8/2016, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    4. David Caldevilla-Domínguez & Almudena Barrientos-Báez & Graciela Padilla-Castillo, 2021. "Twitter as a Tool for Citizen Education and Sustainable Cities after COVID-19," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-17, March.
    5. Camagni, Roberto & Capello, Roberta & Nijkamp, Peter, 1998. "Towards sustainable city policy: an economy-environment technology nexus," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 103-118, January.
    6. Tulin Vural Arslan & Selen Durak & Deniz Ozge Aytac, 2016. "Attaining SDG11: can sustainability assessment tools be used for improved transformation of neighbourhoods in historic city centers?," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(4), pages 180-202, November.
    7. Amr ElAlfy & Kareem M. Darwish & Olaf Weber, 2020. "Corporations and sustainable development goals communication on social media: Corporate social responsibility or just another buzzword?," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 1418-1430, September.
    8. Fitzgerald, Joan, 2010. "Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195382761.
    9. Roland Zinkernagel & James Evans & Lena Neij, 2018. "Applying the SDGs to Cities: Business as Usual or a New Dawn?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-18, September.
    10. Longyu Shi & Linwei Han & Fengmei Yang & Lijie Gao, 2019. "The Evolution of Sustainable Development Theory: Types, Goals, and Research Prospects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-16, December.
    11. Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu & Melanie Nguyen, 2020. "Monitoring the SDGs: Digital and social technologies to ensure citizen participation, inclusiveness and transparency," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(4), pages 483-500, July.
    12. Francesca Abastante & Isabella M. Lami & Marika Gaballo, 2021. "Pursuing the SDG11 Targets: The Role of the Sustainability Protocols," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-19, March.
    13. Marco Bagliani & Egidio Dansero & Matteo Puttilli, 2010. "Territory and energy sustainability: the challenge of renewable energy sources," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(4), pages 457-472.
    14. Adriane MacDonald & Amelia Clarke & Lei Huang, 2019. "Multi-stakeholder Partnerships for Sustainability: Designing Decision-Making Processes for Partnership Capacity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 409-426, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fahim Sufi & Mohammed J. Alghamdi & Musleh Alsulami, 2025. "Mapping the Global Discourse on Sustainable Development: A Sentiment-Based Clustering of SDG Narratives Across 100 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-19, August.
    2. Soumya Balakrishnan & Suzanne Elayan & Martin Sykora & Marin Solter & Rob Feick & Christopher Hewitt & Yi Qiao Liu & Ketan Shankardass, 2023. "Sustainable Smart Cities—Social Media Platforms and Their Role in Community Neighborhood Resilience—A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(18), pages 1-22, September.
    3. Enara Zarrabeitia-Bilbao & Maite Jaca-Madariaga & Rosa-María Rio-Belver & Izaskun Alvarez-Meaza, 2025. "From Sustainable Development Goals to sustainable industry, innovation and infrastructure: insights from the digital sphere," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 9407-9425, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ferrari, S. & Zoghi, M. & Blázquez, T. & Dall’O’, G., 2022. "Towards worldwide application of neighborhood sustainability assessments: A systematic review on realized case studies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Danila Parygin & Natalia Sadovnikova & Leyla Gamidullaeva & Anton Finogeev & Nikolay Rashevskiy, 2022. "Tools and Technologies for Sustainable Territorial Development in the Context of a Quadruple Innovation Helix," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-19, July.
    3. Li, Yulei & Cao, Dongmei & Hewitt, Michael & Shan, Shan, 2026. "Using large-language models to analyse social media engagement with the public sector communication on circular economy: Evidence from X," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    4. Alan Bandeira Pinheiro & Gabriel Gusso Mazzo & Gabriele da Cunha Lopes & Manuel Castelo Branco, 2023. "A Bird’s Eye View: Uncovering the Impact of Stakeholder Pressure on Sustainable Development Goal Disclosure," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-15, November.
    5. Daniela Smiraglia & Luca Salvati & Gianluca Egidi & Rosanna Salvia & Antonio Giménez-Morera & Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir, 2021. "Toward a New Urban Cycle? A Closer Look to Sprawl, Demographic Transitions and the Environment in Europe," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-14, January.
    6. Javier García López & Raffaele Sisto & Javier Benayas & Álvaro de Juanes & Julio Lumbreras & Carlos Mataix, 2021. "Assessment of the Results and Methodology of the Sustainable Development Index for Spanish Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-29, June.
    7. Junuguru Srinivas & Naveen Kolloju & Akanksha Singh & Siriman Naveen & Sudhaveni Naresh, 2024. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Sustainable Development Goals-2030," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 15485-15498, December.
    8. Luiza Vigne Bennedetti & Paulo Antônio de Almeida Sinisgalli & Maurício Lamano Ferreira & Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira, 2023. "Challenges to Promote Sustainability in Urban Agriculture Models: A Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-14, January.
    9. Abdelhamid Zaidi & Samuel-Soma M. Ajibade & Majd Musa & Festus Victor Bekun, 2023. "New Insights into the Research Landscape on the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Sustainable Smart Cities: A Bibliometric Mapping and Network Analysis Approach," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 13(4), pages 287-299, July.
    10. Satish Kumar & Dipasha Sharma & Sandeep Rao & Weng Marc Lim & Sachin Kumar Mangla, 2025. "Past, present, and future of sustainable finance: insights from big data analytics through machine learning of scholarly research," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 345(2), pages 1061-1104, February.
    11. Emine Tahsin, 2026. "Challenges of the SDGs performance of Türkiye “An Evenness and Income Trend Evaluation”," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-35, March.
    12. Tassilo Herrschel, 2013. "Competitiveness AND Sustainability: Can ‘Smart City Regionalism’ Square the Circle?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2332-2348, August.
    13. James Keirstead & Matt Leach, 2008. "Bridging the gaps between theory and practice: a service niche approach to urban sustainability indicators," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(5), pages 329-340.
    14. Beck, Donizete & Ferasso, Marcos, 2023. "How can Stakeholder Capitalism contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? A Cross-network Literature Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(PA).
    15. Finco, Adele & Nijkamp, Peter, 1999. "Planning for sustainable spatial development : principles and application," Serie Research Memoranda 0030, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    16. Angela Connelly & Jeremy Carter & John Handley & Stephen Hincks, 2018. "Enhancing the Practical Utility of Risk Assessments in Climate Change Adaptation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-12, May.
    17. Walter Leal Filho & João Henrique Paulino Pires Eustachio & Lucas Veiga Ávila & Maria Alzira Pimenta Dinis & Paula M. Hernandez‐Diaz & Karina Batista & Bruno Borsari & Ismaila Rimi Abubakar, 2025. "Enhancing the contribution of higher education institutions to sustainable development research: A focus on post‐2015 SDGs," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(2), pages 1745-1757, April.
    18. Fanchao Kong & Hongkai Zhang & Xiangyan Meng & Shuai Li & Jia Liu, 2022. "Can the Policy of National Urban Agglomeration Improve Economic and Environmental Gains? Evidence from Quasi-Natural Experiments with 280 Cities in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-18, June.
    19. Yang, Xiaoxi & Zhang, Dansha & Masron, Tajul Ariffin, 2024. "The impact of smart city construction on achieving peak carbon neutrality: Evidence from 31 provinces in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    20. Abbas Hassan & Hyowon Lee, 2015. "The paradox of the sustainable city: definitions and examples," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 17(6), pages 1267-1285, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:15:p:8136-:d:598366. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.