Abstract
Measuring the comparative sustainability levels of cities, regions, institutions and projects is an essential procedure in creating sustainable urban futures. This paper introduces a new urban sustainability assessment model: “The Sustainable Infrastructure, Land-use, Environment and Transport Model (SILENT)”. The SILENT Model is an advanced geographic information system and indicator-based comparative urban sustainability indexing model. The model aims to assist planners and policy makers in their daily tasks in sustainable urban planning and development by providing an integrated sustainability assessment framework. The paper gives an overview of the conceptual framework and components of the model and discusses the theoretical constructs, methodological procedures, and future development of this promising urban sustainability assessment model.
Highlights
In recent years climate change and other rising environmental concerns and problems have put sustainable urban development on the top of the agenda in almost every city across the world [1,2].The increased and urgent environmental agenda has engendered the need for employing sustainabilitySustainability 2010, 2 assessment frameworks as key mechanisms for measuring the impacts of development on the environment, and as key policy instruments for supporting the transition to a sustainable urban development path [3,4]
As Meadows [19] notes, indicators arise from values and, in turn, they create values; the biggest advantage of an indicator-based comparative urban sustainability assessment model is the quantifiability of the comparative sustainability levels
The SILENT Model develops a set of indices and a composite sustainability index to be used for benchmarking and performance assessment of comparative urban sustainability levels and development of relevant policies and strategies, considering both current and future comparative sustainability levels
Summary
In recent years climate change and other rising environmental concerns and problems have put sustainable urban development on the top of the agenda in almost every city across the world [1,2]. The literature indicates limitations of the existing assessment models and sustainable urban development requests, which are rapidly increasing in sophistication, and this creates an urgent need for more effective assessment methods and tools [16,17]. In line with these sentiments, this paper reports a study that develops a comprehensive sustainability assessment model entitled ―The Sustainable Infrastructure, Land-use, Environment and Transport Model (SILENT)‖, which aims to provide a more effective sustainability assessment by taking all of the major aspects affecting sustainability into account: environmental, economic and social. We outline potential policy implications and plans for further development of the SILENT Model
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