Abstract
Shen & Guo (2014) have recently developed an array of urban sustainability indicators (USIs) as a tool to measure urban sustainability. Using 2006 data for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, they developed a theoretical integrated USI model with a hierarchical index system, to spatially monitor urban sustainability using geo-matic approaches and further statistically detect its spatial patterns. The purpose of this study is to apply Shen and Guo’s general approach to a major American city, Cincinnati, Ohio, utilizing U.S. census data from 2010, to test its utility beyond the original Canadian test case. In doing so, the model and its indicator structure were modified for the American context after a further review of sustainability indicators. Unlike Shen and Guo, however, the model is not subjectively weighted. Nevertheless, the revised model similarly applied both statistical analysis and geo-statistical analysis to explore how urban sustainability was spatially distributed and what spatial patterns (random, dispersed or clustered) for the indices could be found among Cincinnati’s census tracts. This work confirms Shen and Guo’s conclusion that geo-matic tools can be applied to detect spatially urban sustainability patterns, which can be provided visually for urban planners, managers and administrators for use in future policy making and implementation.
Highlights
A recent study (Shen & Guo, 2014) developed a number of urban sustainability indicator (USI) sets to test whether they could be used as a tool to quantitatively measure urban sustainability as had been proposed previously (Harvey, 1991)
The Greater Cincinnati is divided into 3 major zones; i.e., the “inner core” defined as downtown and adjacent areas, the “inner ring” defined as the area between downtown and the loop highway I-275, and the “outer ring” defined as the areas that are outside the I-275 loop
The Transportation & Accessibility Index map shows that higher values are located especially in the inner core, and in the inner ring as an effect of bus routes and groceries being located at the loop junctions
Summary
A recent study (Shen & Guo, 2014) developed a number of urban sustainability indicator (USI) sets to test whether they could be used as a tool to quantitatively measure urban sustainability as had been proposed previously (Harvey, 1991). Using a theoretical integrated USI model with a hierarchical index system that they established and tested in earlier work (Shen, Kyllo, & Guo, 2013), Shen and Guo attempted to spatially monitor urban sustainability using geo-matic approaches and further statistically detect its spatial patterns. The purpose of this study, is to apply Shen and Guo’s general approach to a somewhat larger and more complex American city, Cincinnati, Ohio, utilizing U.S census data from 2010, to test its applicability beyond the original Canadian test case. The adjusted theoretical USI framework model has the same two broad categories of Urbanization and Quality of Life (Figure 1), but has 21 urban sustainability indicators, rather than ten, in a hierarchical system. This work confirms Shen and Guo’s conclusion that the geo-matic tools can be applied to detect spatially urban
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