Community participation in the identification of neighbourhood sustainability indicators in Brazil

Abstract

The challenges inherent to urbanisation, such as the densification of peripheral locations, promote precarious urban scenarios with several deficiencies in infrastructure and habitability, where neighbourhoods are formed without planning guidelines as in the vast majority of Brazilian cities. Given this scenario, how can these neighbourhoods become more sustainable? While cities strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda, some issues are not often discussed at the local level or with community participation. The objective of this study is to present and analyse the opinion of citizens regarding urban sustainability issues, focusing on a neighbourhood level. Exploratory descriptive research was developed, contemplating 42 questions based on assessment tools were presented to participants in order to determine their degree of agreement or disagreement with each statement using a five-point Likert scale. The dataset was subjected to principal component analysis to verify which indicators contribute most to sustainability from the perspective of the community. The results demonstrate synergy between observed urban problems and positive opinions of respondents, with emphasis on urban infrastructure, social well-being, education, security and urban space. The arguments extracted from this research aim to inform the development of an evaluation structure for existing peripheral neighbourhoods, applied to medium-sized cities in southern Brazil, based on the opinions of residents.