Bringing SDG 11 into the Classroom: 8 Lesson Ideas for Sustainable Cities & Communities

Sustainable cities and communities are the heartbeat of a thriving world — and they’re the focus of SDG 11. This goal emphasises building safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable human settlements. From affordable housing and accessible transport to green public spaces and disaster resilience, SDG 11 calls on us to imagine cities and communities where everyone can flourish.

In this post, you’ll find 8 free and digital lesson plans designed to help your students explore, engage with, and contribute to SDG 11 using BookWidgets.

💡 These digital SDG 11 activities are created with BookWidgets. You can make a free copy of the lessons to your BookWidgets account, or access the group folder where they’re all collected. Feel free to duplicate the activities, adapt them (language, instructions, settings) for your classroom, and then share with your students — you’ll also receive data and be able to provide feedback.

Make sure to keep an eye on more SDG lesson resources below— we publish a new post with ready-to-use SDG activities each month!

Now, let’s dive in.

What is SDG 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities?

SDG 11, Sustainable Cities & Communities, aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. The United Nations defines it with ambitions such as providing access to safe housing, transport systems, and green public spaces; enhancing inclusive urbanisation; reducing the impact of natural disasters; and ensuring that human-settlement planning protects cultural and natural heritage.

Teaching SDG 11 in the classroom invites students to view the places where they live, learn, and play through a sustainability lens. It gives them the opportunity to consider how urban planning, social policy, infrastructure design, and community action converge — and how they can become changemakers in their own local environments.

Why should teachers include SDG 11 in their lessons?

Integrating SDG 11 into your teaching doesn’t just fulfil curriculum links — it cultivates future-focused citizens and connects students to their own lived environments. Here’s why it’s powerful:

• Encourages local to global thinking: Students explore their local city or community and connect it to global challenges of urbanisation, infrastructure, and sustainability.
• Supports cross-curricular learning: SDG 11 links geography, social studies, civics, design & technology, environmental science, and language arts.
• Promotes civic engagement and agency: When students examine their own urban spaces and imagine improvements, they develop a sense of ownership and responsibility.
• Connects classroom learning to real action: Investigating neighbourhoods, mapping transport routes, creating sustainable redesigns — these tasks can lead to visible change.
• Empowers students to contribute to inclusive communities: Lessons on SDG 11 help students recognise barriers such as unsafe housing, lack of green spaces or unaffordable transport, and think creatively about solutions.

Review this checklist, which outlines all the target goals for SDG 11.

8 Creative Lesson Plans to Teach SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities

1. The Greenhouse Effect - Quiz with Science Simulation

This interactive quiz helps middle school students understand the greenhouse effect and its link to SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities. The activity includes a science simulation that allows students to discover how the greenhouse effect works by experimenting with greenhouse gases themselves. Through guided quiz questions, students learn how large cities and urban inventions and evolutions contribute to climate change. This quiz connects scientific understanding with real-world sustainability, encouraging critical thinking about climate-resilient and environmentally responsible cities.

2. Building a Sustainable City - Game and Checklist

Let your high school students explore SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities through the immersive city-building game Cities: Skylines II. This simulation game closely aligns with the core themes of SDG 11 by allowing students to design, build, and manage their own virtual, sustainable cities.

By playing the game, students gain hands-on insights into urban planning, infrastructure development, environmental sustainability, and social equity. They experience firsthand how decisions about transport, housing, energy, and public services affect a city's livability and resilience. Through experimenting with policies and strategies, students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills while learning about the real-world trade-offs involved in creating inclusive and sustainable communities.

Cities: Skylines II offers a dynamic, engaging learning experience that helps students understand the complexity of modern cities and empowers them to imagine solutions for a more sustainable and resilient urban future—making it a powerful tool for teaching SDG 11 in the classroom. This BookWidgets checklist activity lists everything your students need to think about when building their sustainable city and community in the game. 👇

3. SDG 11 Terminology and Concepts - Flashcards

Introduce your students to key vocabulary and concepts related to SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities with this interactive flashcards lesson. Through engaging digital cards, learners explore terms such as urban planning, infrastructure, public transport, green spaces, and resilience. This activity builds foundational knowledge about what makes cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable — the core focus of SDG 11. Students can flip through the cards to test their understanding, strengthen their vocabulary, and prepare for deeper discussions or follow-up activities on sustainable urban development.

4. SDG 11 Vocabulary - Crossword

Reinforce your students’ understanding of key SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities concepts with this engaging crossword puzzle activity. Designed as a follow-up to the flashcards lesson above, this interactive crossword challenges students to recall and apply key terminology related to sustainable cities, including infrastructure, transport, green space, resilience, and urban planning. By solving clues and completing the puzzle, students strengthen their vocabulary retention and deepen their understanding of how sustainable, inclusive, and resilient communities function. This fun, digital activity supports critical thinking and prepares middle school students for further exploration of SDG 11 topics.

5. Linking SDG 11 Concepts to Images - Pair Matching

Reinforce your students’ understanding of SDG 11 concepts with this interactive pair-matching activity in BookWidgets. In this engaging game, younger students match core sustainability city terms with their corresponding visual icons. By connecting key concepts such as public transportation, green space, urban planning, and more, learners strengthen their vocabulary and deepen their understanding of what makes cities inclusive, resilient, and sustainable. Pair matching improves memory retention using the dual coding learning strategy while adding a playful learning element that keeps students actively engaged with SDG 11 content.

6. Coloring Activity: Vehicles & Sustainable Transportation - Split Worksheet

Introduce your primary school students to the idea of sustainable transportation with this fun and creative coloring activity. Children can color different types of vehicles — such as buses, trains, bicycles, cars, and scooters — while learning how various modes of transport impact their cities and the environment. This activity serves as a gentle and engaging introduction to SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities, helping young learners recognise that transportation choices affect air quality, traffic, and community well-being. Perfect for early grades as a playful start to discussions about eco-friendly travel, clean air, and building sustainable communities.

7. Community Action Plan - Split Worksheet

Turn learning into action with this Community Action Plan lesson connected to SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities. In this interactive BookWidgets activity, students identify challenges in their own city or neighbourhood—such as traffic, lack of green spaces, or accessibility issues—and develop concrete, realistic actions to improve their community. Students think about who is involved, what needs to change, and which small steps can make a meaningful difference. This lesson encourages active citizenship, critical thinking, and problem-solving, helping students understand how sustainable, inclusive communities are built through local action as well as global goals.

8. Transportation Games - Hotspot Image

Introduce your youngest learners to basic modes of transportation with this playful hotspot image activity designed for kindergarten students. In this interactive BookWidgets game, children tap different tiles to open games so they can explore and identify vehicles like buses, bikes, trains, and scooters. This activity connects to SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities by helping kids begin to recognise sustainable and inclusive ways of moving around a city, such as walking, biking, and public transport. With simple visuals and easy interaction, this game builds early awareness of how transport shapes our communities while keeping learning fun and age-appropriate.

More ready-to-use SDG lesson plans and resources

Reminder: This is part ten of our blog post series with lesson activities for teaching the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We will post a new blog about the next SDG every month. Go check out earlier blog posts on the SDGs:

• 8 Engaging Lesson Plans to Teach "SDG 1: No Poverty" to Your Students
• 8 Creative Ways to Teach "SDG 2: Zero Hunger" to Your Students
• 8 Free Lesson Plans to Teach "SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being"
• Bringing SDG 4 into the Classroom: 8 Lesson Ideas for Quality Education
• 8 Free Lesson Plans on SDG 5 Gender Equality for all Grade Level Students
• 8 Free Digital Lessons for Teaching SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
• 8 Exciting Lesson Ideas to Teach Students About SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
• 8 Digital Lessons to Teach Students about SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 8 Creative Ways to Teach SDG 9 - Infrastructure, Industrialization and Innovation - in Your Classroom
• SDG 10 Explained for Students: 8 Digital Lesson Plans on Reduced Inequalities

And if you can't wait this long for all the other posts, we've already created 1 lesson for each SDG in this digital group work planner activity. Here's the blog post about teaching the SDGs. You can find all the separate SDG activities in this BookWidgets group folder, in case you want to duplicate the activities and make some changes.

Wrap up

Teaching SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities allows students to look at the places where they live through new eyes. Cities and communities are more than buildings and roads—they are systems that shape people’s safety, opportunities, well-being, and sense of belonging. By exploring topics like housing, transport, green spaces, and disaster resilience, students begin to understand how thoughtful planning can make communities more inclusive and sustainable for everyone.

With interactive tools like BookWidgets, these complex ideas become tangible and meaningful. Whether students are redesigning public spaces, analysing transport systems, or creating action plans for their own neighbourhoods, they are actively engaging with real-world challenges connected to SDG 11.

Remember: all featured SDG 11 lesson ideas are designed with BookWidgets. You can duplicate the activities from this BookWidgets group, adapt them to your classroom context, and share them with your students—or create your own lessons from scratch. By bringing SDG 11 into your classroom, you empower students to think critically, act locally, and imagine the sustainable communities of the future.

Want to learn more about creating engaging lesson activities with BookWidgets?

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