Abstract
This paper describes the development of Citylab Post-Construction, a Swedish certification system for evaluating the sustainability performance of urban areas in a post-construction phase once the area is inhabited. The process design was based on transdisciplinary and research-through-design approaches, and involved experts and practitioners within Swedish urban planning, real estate and construction sector. This paper is not highlighting the certification system per se, but rather the process of developing it, with the aim of increasing the understanding of such design processes. A previously developed, but so far untested, framework of key considerations for certification systems was used to clarify benefits and drawbacks of different design decisions. The framework was used in all steps of the process, from defining the overall structure, to selecting indicators, formulating detailed requirements and assessing comments of the open consultation of a draft version. The framework of key considerations proved useful in supporting this process, by highlighting conflicts as well as synergies and creating transparency with respect to trade-offs needed between being e.g., scientifically credible but still practical enough. While it is difficult to separate the framework from the process in which it was put to use, we believe that the framework can be supportive also in other processes, both for developing new certification systems or for refining and evaluating existing ones.
Highlights
An increasing share of the global population is living in urban areas [1], meaning that drivers of resource use are increasingly concentrated to cities [2]
The two leaders for each working group were invited to a workshop to discuss the categorisation of indicators made by the project team
It became evident that environmental sustainability aspects are often easier to measure on a performance basis with high validity, while still retaining a high level of influence, than social sustainability aspects
Summary
An increasing share of the global population is living in urban areas [1], meaning that drivers of resource use are increasingly concentrated to cities [2]. Existing certification systems have been widely analysed regarding their structure and content, including use of criteria, scoring, weighting, different types of indicators etc., and consequences of such choices, e.g., bias towards ecological aspects of sustainability and vagueness of certification results due to too few mandatory indicators [10,11,12,13,14]. This critique shows a need for analysing the process of developing certification systems, to better understand such processes, including trade-offs regarding benefits and drawbacks with different design decisions.
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