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The UN Sustainable Development Goals are aligned with the approach we take, the values we hold, and the change we are seeking to bring about. Our projects contribute to their realisation.
Click on the icons below to read more about the Goals and how they relate to our work:
Economic growth must be inclusive to provide sustainable jobs and promote equality.
We believe poverty is defined by more than an income level, but rather, a lack of access to opportunities. Working with communities to generate these is a central part of the RCDC model.
The food and agriculture sector offers key solutions for development, and is central for hunger and poverty eradication.
Integrating community-run food production into designs is a key part of our approach to resilient sustainable development.
Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being all at all ages is essential to sustainable development.
The high-quality projects we create are proven to positively impact human health and support the ability to flourish.
Obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development.
Education is one of the most important means with which to combat poverty. We have proven experience providing a full range of educational programmes, from early childhood development to adult opportunity.
Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.
We strive for gender equality and promote female leadership on every level, from our development projects to our collective team.
Clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in.
RCDC’s blue-and-green development methodology means each of our project contains an integrated plan for sustainable water and sanitation management.
Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity.
Our comprehensive services ranging from landscape architecture to engineering integrate the most cutting-edge clean energy technologies and approaches.
Sustainable economic growth will require societies to create the conditions that allow people to have quality jobs.
RCDC’s concept for a self-sustaining micro-economy is an integral part of each and every one of our multi-scalar projects.
Investments in infrastructure are crucial to achieving sustainable development.
Resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive development and fostering innovation, is one of our foundational principles.
To reduce inequalities, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations.
Our work redresses the uneven urban development that perpetuates economic, social and environmental inequality.
There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more.
Making cities more sustainable means including people in development processes. Together, we can achieve a safer, more resilient and more equitable built environment.
Responsible Production and Consumption
RCDC believes in enabling people to influence the production of the world around them and actively promote this in our model.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones, aggravating water management problems, reducing agricultural production and food security, increasing health risks, damaging critical infrastructure and interrupting the provision of basic services such water and sanitation, education, energy and transport.
Climate change is a global challenge that affects everyone, everywhere. Our projects are meticulously planned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen resilience and climate adaptivity.
Careful management of this essential global resource is a key feature of a sustainable future.
What we deposit into our water systems has an impact far beyond each project—we strive to leave as little a trace as possible with our initiatives.
Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss
RCDC works for and with people to create the best possible conditions for our common future in regard to a sustainable built environment.
Access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels.
Peace and justice are the basis for strong communities—participatory development that focuses on social capital is crucial to realising this goal in our work.
Revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
RCDC is a collective of people that relentlessly pursue equitable, environmentally-just development. The entire spectrum of Sustainable Development Goals is aligned with our process.
Our goal is to end the predominance of inflexible masterplans that fixate on end-states, that do not develop the urban fabric as a whole, and do little to address the real issues facing the majority of urban inhabitants.
To combat this we bring together:
to transform the way we create our urban world.
Thus we are able to cooperate seamlessly to deliver projects from inception to completion and into the future.
In this way we can find hidden opportunities and synergies in the design and implementation of projects that would often be missed by a disconnected group of specialised service providers.
Ranging from project managers to environmental specialists, we are bonde both by our shared values and by long experience of working closely together.
We develop genuine, long-term relationships with local communities through continuous engagement.
We identify first what they most require to move forwards, planning together and intelligently allocating resources to act as seeds, laying the conditions for growth of crucial elements such as sustainable infrastructure, microenterprise, and affordable housing,
This is supported by social and economic management organisations that we set up, to create opportunities that will persist far into the future.
Every part of what RCDC does is about giving agency to local communities, providing them with the tools and capacities they need to build the urban environment they deserve to inhabit.
We focus on setting in place conditions that catalyse growth, leveraging urban investment and development as a springboard to revitalise places and build opportunities for the future.
By creating many opportunities for micro-enterprise and development in the urban fabric itself, the limited resources of both the private and public sector become multiplied many times over in their effectiveness.
This provides the conditions to unlock the innate creative energy of people; transforming neighbourhoods from the bottom up.
Valuing the collective power of a massive amount of tiny ideas, interactions, interventions, all add up to a transformative whole.
Instead of trying to impose an end-state plan for what a place should be, we start planning from the real needs and desires of the people who live there.
In this way we deliver places that respond to people's needs, leading to long term systemic transformation. Thus we are able to truly benefit communities and the environment, adding many layers of significant value to our clients' projects far into the future.
We start swiftly and take many small steps; iteratively developing a place in continuous response to the social, economic and environmental realities and opportunities on the ground.
In this way we are able to avoid potential conflict that can derail projects, dramatically mitigating risk. Only by working together can we unleash the necessary creative force to meet the challenges of the future.
We work with all the urban stakeholders, the private sector, government, community and NGOs to help to create thousands of opportunities for local communities to participate in the formation of place.
Twinned with this is resilience - the ability for places and people to withstand shocks and dangers, such as food and water shortages. These dangers are already being increased by climate change - therefore building resilience capacity into our work is as important as sustainability.
Social sustainability is also crucial: We work together not only to develop land successfully and alleviate problems, but transform urban systems from the ground up, breaking up historical patterns of spatial and economic injustice, and revitalising entire neighbourhoods.
Sustainability is the ability for a society to survive into the future – in order to achieve this is cannot systematically degrade the environment that it depends on. Therefore integrating sustainable infrastructure is fundamental to everything we do.
