Multidimensional sustainability assessment for the cities of the Global South

Abstract

Developing countries will face extraordinary urbanization in the near future. At the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in 2016, the new Agenda acknowledged that developing countries will experience unique and emerging challenges in achieving urban sustainability. Most researchers have paid much attention to analyzing the success of Global North cities in sustainability. This chapter focuses on assessing the urban sustainability of 17 cities in the Global South using PROMETHEE multi-criteria decision aid tools, which are well suited for the strong sustainability assessment. The weighted-sum method, which considers weak sustainability, is also applied to test the robustness of the results. The 17 Global South cities are: Istanbul, Mumbai, Delhi, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Almaty, Johannesburg, Kampala, Nairobi, Mexico City, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Lima, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Quito. These cities are ranked and compared based on three dimensions of sustainability: economy, environment and society. The results show that Shenzhen and Shanghai are the leading cities in sustainability among the 17 Global South cities, while these two cities are incomparable with each other in PROMETHEE I. Based on the characteristics of these two cities, the reasons behind their success are analyzed. Moreover, by comparing Shenzhen and Shanghai with Global North city Singapore, which performs well in sustainability, differences and similarities of sustainable Global South and North cities are evaluated.