Urban Sustainability Index Research Articles

Indicator for formulating and measuring the Urban Sustainability Index: A Review

Indicator for formulating and measuring the Urban Sustainability Index: A Review

Land Use and Environmental Planning in Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Over the last two decades, Pakistan has made considerable progress in reducing absolute poverty and improving shared prosperity, but most of the population remains poor or vulnerable. A key dimension of social vulnerability in South Asia is exposure to hydrological and meteorological hazards including storms, floods, and droughts. In this review, a questionnaire from the inhabitants to assess the adequacy of existing urban plans regarding reasonable improvement in Rawalpindi has been organized. In addition, by gathering the important secondary information from the concerned divisions, the planning specialists from Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA), Capital Development Authority (CDA), Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) Rawalpindi and the engineers of the plans were likewise met and their opinions discussed. Furthermore, utilizing SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) to break down the essential information and to draw deductions. Similarly, the urban sustainability index, a set of indicators based on environmental, social and economic parameters was selected for development. As the result, planning issues and problems in Rawalpindi were analyzed in five separate subjects: (1) Land use planning and policy, laws and regulations, (2) Urbanization and transport system, (3) Landuse Change and Its Impact on Watershed Hydrology, (4) Site planning techniques and (5) Social and environmental impact assessment. The mitigation measures and recommendations were suggested accordingly.

Integrated multivariate data analysis for Urban Sustainability Assessment, a case study of Casablanca city

• The satellite images and census data are good information sources for urban management and development. • The PCA method is robust, flexible, and provides an accurate outcome in the case of a large number of indicators. • The population density is one of the main driving forces of urban sustainability. • The urban sustainability is inadequate in 50% of Casablanca city containing two-thirds of the whole urban population. In the last few years, the world's urban population has significantly increased and it is expected to undergo a continuous accelerated growth. This urban revolution confronts us with real challenges to promote urban sustainable development and has significant effects on socioeconomic development and the urban environment. This research suggests an approach to assess urban sustainability (US) based on the integration of census information, GIS, and remote-sensing data, which can support urban planners and decision-makers in broad environmental and socioeconomic perspectives. Five environmental indices retrieved from Landsat-8 imagery were coupled with eight general census socioeconomic indicators using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA produced three components, and each one was considered a unique urban sustainability aspect covering social, economic, and/or environmental dimensions. Furthermore, the obtained result was exploited to develop a synthetic US index at the commune level with the main aim to assess urban sustainability and its spatial distribution. The outcome depicts that the US is adequate in 50% of Casablanca city, which contains nearly the third of the urban population. This research remains so promising and can be considered by urban planners as a reference to take necessary actions to improve sustainability, resilience, and well-being in the most vulnerable communes.

A Decomposed Data Analysis Approach to Assessing City Sustainable Development Performance: A Network DEA Model with a Slack-Based Measure

This paper deals with urban sustainable development in China. We propose a network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with a slack-based measure (SBM) to analyze the eco-efficiency of 284 Chinese cities, enabling us to find a way to open the “black box” in conventional DEA models and introduce social well-being factors into the model, and depict the role of local government in providing public service and improving social well-beings. We set up a framework of urban development by dividing the process of into two steps. The first stage is a production system translating inputs and natural resources into GDP and waste production, which will be inputs to the second stage for distribution and consumption to realize social welfare and environmental protection. The results show eco-efficiency of Chinese cities experienced a significant decrease from 2005 to 2016, which should be mainly attributed to the distribution and consumption processes. Structural differences are described by regions, administrative level and clusters. These results are compared with an existing urban sustainability index system developed by McKinsey and an ANOVA approach is conducted to reveal differences between cities across regions and clusters. This article sheds new light on the understanding of urban sustainable construction and development in China regarding the service performance of local government.

Exploring patterns and consequences of land consumption in a coastal city-region

BackgroundThe rapid expansion of built-up areas and land consumption with unsustainable spatial patterns in coastal urban areas has become a global major concern due to its far-reaching consequences for human daily life, environmental sustainability, and living organisms. However, the research on this phenomenon in these areas has received less attention. To fill this gap, we conducted a study to explore the spatial patterns of land consumption at both micro- and macro-levels and to evaluate its consequences in terms of sustainable development in a coastal city-region of Mazandaran Province in northern Iran. To achieve these two goals, we combined two methods of urban land density function and landscape expansion index (LEI) to explore spatial patterns of land consumption and also evaluated the sustainability of the region with two methods of the hierarchical analytical process (AHP) and urban sustainability index (USI).ResultsThe spatial patterns of land consumption in the city-region of Mazandaran from 1996 to 2016 at the macro-level changed from a decentralized-sprawl to a centralized-sprawl pattern. At the micro-level, the dominant spatial pattern of land consumption in the city-region changed gradually from the outlying pattern towards the edge expansion and infilling patterns. Also, the spatial pattern of the built-up patches in the majority of the urban areas had conformity with the dominant pattern of the region. Besides, the spatial patterns of land consumption in the region were in an unsustainable state and were changing towards more unsustainability. The absence of urban containment policies and plans could lead to further destruction of the natural environment and increase its unsustainability.ConclusionsOur results indicate that the urban areas of the coastal Mazandaran have the same behavior in the spatial pattern of land consumption at the macro- and micro-levels and all are in the same direction and follow the dominant pattern of the region.

Measuring Urban Low-Carbon Sustainability in Four Chinese Cities

Practices and research on measuring traditionally urban sustainability abound, therefore the challenge now is related to how the urban carbon issues are included into current measuring methods, thus there is a need to develop methods for measuring urban low-carbon sustainability. In this paper, a simple method, which is based on low-carbon sustainability index, is developed. The overall urban low-carbon sustainability index is the weighted sum of 11 single indices, and each single index is defined as the indicator assessing the development level against the baseline. The baseline is often the criteria or the minimum requirement of low-carbon sustainability. Case studies in four Chinese cities have put this method into practice, and the results show that all four selected cities fail to pass the testing of sensible low-carbon sustainability rule and they are all in weakly low-carbon sustainable development. Although the four cities have made great progress in their capacity building on pollution control and their capacities on wastewater treatment, main pollutants’ removal and household and hazardous wastes treatment are enough to meet the needs of local development, they are all facing the great challenges on using of sustainable energy, offsetting of CO2 emissions and adoptions of nature-based solutions. The method developed by this research is a useful tool for decision makers identifying whether the local development is not on a low-carbon sustainable path.

Stay or Leave? Arctic Youth Prospects and Sustainable Futures of the Russian Arctic Communities

Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, this paper attempts to answer a research question that is critical for many Arctic communities: “What makes local youth want to leave?” Using the Russian Arctic cities of Naryan-Mar, Salekhard, and Novy Urengoy (Nenets and Yamalo-Nenets regions) as case studies, this article explores how local youth contribute to social sustainability and define the futures of their Arctic cities. The study identifies new variables relevant to the youth cohort built on the Urban Sustainability Index and social sustainability model. Based on 400+ questionnaires and interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, education professionals, and public officials, this study looks at the youth’s educational and professional strategies, social activities and cultural consumption, migration patterns, and civic engagement in a broader context. This article also discusses how local youth feel disempowered in building their futures and highlights the importance of access to educational opportunities and wider career choices in the Arctic.

Evaluating the urban metabolism sustainability of municipal solid waste management system: An extended exergy accounting and indexing perspective

In this study, Extended Exergy Accounting was adopted to develop an accounting model to evaluate the performance of a Municipal Solid Waste Management System. Furthermore, urban metabolism sustainability index for waste was also proposed to represent the unified society-economy-environment impacts of the MSWMS under the framework of a comprehensive sustainability evaluation. A detailed analysis of wood and horticultural waste treatment scenarios in Singapore was done as a case study. It was found that the gasification scenario theoretically performs significantly better than the incineration scenario, in terms of energy carrier consumption, emissions, thermodynamic efficiency and sustainability. Analysis results show that, if extrapolated to Singapore’s total wood and horticultural waste, gasification technology has potential to reduce energy consumption and increase electricity output. An uncertainty analysis was carried out and it was found that the main extended exergetic parameters of the two scenarios considered were in the range of 3–8%, thus confirming the reliability of the accounting results. A sensitivity analysis of the urban metabolism sustainability index for waste was conducted for the gasification scenario to identify key influencing factors and seek potential improvements; this was done by considering changes in four variables: transportation distance, electrical efficiency, working hour increment and gross capital cost per ton waste treated. It was found that, to ensure the feasibility and sustainability of gasification scenario, the following are required: keeping the electricity production efficiency greater than 21.33%; the transportation distance between the gasification power plant and source of wood and horticultural waste should be kept within 17.08 km; employment of per kton annual treatment capacity should be less than 0.14 workers; wood and horticultural waste source should control the waste collection frequency of no more than 3 times per day and the number of workers participating in the collection each time is less than 4 persons, totaling to 12 workers per day.

Optimum weights of environmental parameters in evaluating urban environmental sustainability index: case study of Jaipur city

ABSTRACT Developing nations including India are witnessing a very rapid rate of urbanization, leading to severe worsening of urban environment due to pollutants. Poor planning of cities is major issue and a big hindrance on the social and economic conditions jeopardizing the human existence in the near future. The challenge lies on how to quantify the environmental quality in a complex scenario where major environmental parameters are monitored only at relatively few locations. Some of the parameters, which would be extremely useful in evaluating or validating environmental sustainability, are difficult to derive and determining their spatial distribution is a challenge. In the present study an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) has been developed for Jaipur City. It is based on important, air, water quality, and municipal solid waste parameters affecting urban health. Using GIS tools, average value of this index is calculated for every ward of Jaipur city and is compared with various data collected for asthma and water-borne diseases from 20 major hospitals in Jaipur to validate the model. Weights of various parameters are optimized using nonlinear generalized reduced gradient (GRG) solver. Final ward-wise ESI map is presented, and it collaborates well with the major industrial areas of the Jaipur City.

Assessing Sustainability of the Capital and Emerging Secondary Cities of Cambodia Based on the 2018 Commune Database

The world is rapidly urbanizing which 68% of its population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Likewise, secondary cities of Cambodia are rapidly emerging while the capital is the largest city with a population of more than two million. Improving urban sustainability is, therefore, necessary for the world, as well as Cambodia. Thus, Cambodia has launched clean city standard indicators, proposed sectoral green city indicators, and adapted one target of global sustainable development goal 11 (UN SDG 11), to improve its urban quality and sustainability. However, using these indicators is not sufficient towards achieving urban sustainability because these indicators are limited in social and economic dimensions. Hence, this study aims to develop all dimensional indicators of sustainability based on all targets of UN SDG 11 with the above indicators. This study focused on the priorities of indicators in Cambodia verified and prioritized by Delphi and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques. Then, a priority-based urban sustainability index for Cambodia was formed based on the concept of sustainability in developing countries. Finally, the standard scores were applied to comparatively assess the sustainability of capital and emerging secondary cities of Cambodia based on the 2018 Commune Database. Through this application, the study also sought to find out whether the priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment. The results showed that the sustainability levels of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville were found to be strong in all environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Battambang is also strong although economic sustainability is slightly lower than the average. Siem Reap is low in economic sustainability level while Poi Pet is remarkably low in environmental and social sustainability. Furthermore, the ranks of sustainability levels of the five cities based on weighted scores are different from their ranks based on unweighted scores. Therefore, this study confirms that priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment towards improving the accuracy of the comparison.

Analysis and proposal of sustainable urban mobility: accessibility to the cultural heritage of the City of Guanajuato; Gto

Through this research and analysis, its intention is to restructure the corporate public transport road network of the Patrimonial city of Guanajuato, based on a systemic approach created by transfer centers and avoiding vehicular traffic. To make the historical center an available, safe, and fast space, with less environmental impact and friendly, we pretend to change the structure of the city. Mobility is a necessity in cities, but it is also a right; it occupies a central role in society while allowing communication, economic activity, and integrating spaces and events; It is needed for all people to access the essential goods and services of a dignified life. The method of analysis that considered is Urban Sustainability as a set of systems, which explains that anyone who presents a problem produces an imbalance in the rest. Therefore, the Urban Sustainability Index (ISU) should understand as a degree achieved by the city to maintain the balance of all systems present in urban life. The elements used were: historical analysis, photographic records, public transport routes, diagrams of vehicle flows, and previous drafts. Its scope changes road capacity and accessibility, quality of life, sustainability, economic, social viability, equity, and quality of the environment. This project is aimed at improving and developing the infrastructure with a set of economically profitable actions. It proposes that short and medium-term actions contribute to a longterm vision and strategy.

Evaluating urban sustainability under different development pathways: A case study of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

With the building of sustainable cities being listed as one of the Sustainable Development Goals in the 2030 Agenda, cities in developing countries are facing more severe challenges. Therefore, it has become very urgent to evaluate and compare sustainability under different policy intervention scenarios. Based on the principle of system dynamics, this study constructed an urban sustainability evaluation model covering six subsystems: economy, livelihood, risk, environment, pollution governance, and resource. Using 13 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as study cases, 5 future policy scenarios were designed under the framework of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways to simulate the variation of the urban sustainability index in each city by 2035. The results reveal that: (1) Medium and small-sized cities around Beijing are facing more challenges to achieve sustainable urban development; (2) the urban sustainability index in each city varies under different policy scenarios. (3) the gap of urban sustainability in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region does not show a significant narrowing trend and is likely to widen in the future. The approach can also be applied to other regions to provide decision support for choosing urban development pathways after comparing possible future trajectories of sustainable urban development.

Comparative Analysis of Urban Development Trends of Beijing and Karachi Metropolitan Areas

Urban sustainability has become a significant challenge globally due to rapidly growing urbanization and industrialization. Hence, this study was conducted to examine the existing urban development trends of metropolitan cities (i.e., Beijing and Karachi) of China and Pakistan in the context of urban sustainability. The development progress in both cities was examined through urban sustainability indices individually and compared with each other. An index system considering 36 indicators was developed based on social, economic, and environmental aspects. The six years (2012–2017) of data used in this study, were obtained from various governmental websites. Furthermore, the Urban Sustainability Index (USI) was evaluated using the statistical standard equal-weighted method. Results revealed that Beijing’s developmental progress is much better than Karachi in terms of socio-economic and environmental development, but there is still a need for improvement. While Karachi faces problems in all three sectors, each indicator of these sectors requires considerable improvement for attaining the top level of the Urban Sustainability Index. However, this study recommends that much attention is needed in the case of Karachi city, whereas Beijing also needs quality advancement in urban development.

Evaluación del índice de sostenibilidad urbana. Aplicación para Lima Metropolitana

Medir la sostenibilidad urbana es una labor de gran relevancia si de ella depende el desarrollo de la ciudad, por eso, la importancia de contar con un método que se aproxime a la realidad con el menor margen de error posible. El presente artículo tiene como fin evaluar el índice de sostenibilidad urbana y proponer una mejora en su método de cálculo. Para ello, se realiza una breve revisión en Scopus sobre la producción académica acerca de este tema. Luego se señalan las consecuencias teóricas evidenciadas tras la revisión y del uso del Índice de Desarrollo Humano como muestra de la insostenibilidad urbana, demarcando la importancia de contar con un instrumento adecuado para medir la sostenibilidad urbana. Posteriormente, se problematiza el caso peruano y se usa el ejemplo de Lima Metropolitana para explicar que el uso del promedio armónico es el más adecuado para calcular el índice de sostenibilidad urbana.

Urban Sustainability Index: Measuring Performance of 15 Metropolitan Cities of India

Around the world, sustainable development has become a top policy discussion as countries struggle to maintain or enhance economic growth without compromising the future. Nowhere is the issue more pressing than in India, where urban areas and their economies are expected to grow rapidly over the next few decades and where resource use and environmental quality are already raising grave concerns. Sustainable development, economic growth that improves the lives of the people without exhausting the environment or other resources, is especially critical in developing countries, where mass urbanization is taking place at a time when man’s impact on the environment has reached a critical juncture. The study investigates if the present pattern of urban development in India in the creation of mega cities is sustainable. The indicators represent a primary tool to provide guidance for policy makers and to potentially assist in decision-making and monitoring local strategies/plans. The outcome of the study will contribute to the design of policies, tools, and approaches essential for planning to attain the goal of sustainable development and the social cohesion of metropolitan regions.

The Urban Sustainability Index in Urban Aglomeration

The regional autonomy positively impacts regional development in terms of competitiveness. Each area tries to have advantage from other areas. One of the parameters of city competitiveness is the concept of sustainable cities. This study aims to identify cities based on sustainable urban development indices in six urban agglomeration area of Semarang: Semarang city, Semarang regency, Kendal regency, Grobogan regency, Demak regency and Salatiga city. Methods of data collection with questionnaires, interviews and documentation. Respondents in this study were the general public, policy makers, and academics. The results showed, based on the sustainable urban development index of the Sustainable Urban Development Indonesia Forum, six districts in urban agglomeration area of Semarang are categorized as less sustainable in 2016. The regencies in the urban agglomeration areas of Semarang indicate the index result of 103,00 - 127,83. The average contribution of the urban leadership, the urban governance, the urbanization and population, the housing and settlements variables are high, while the disaster risk and the climate change, the waterfront areas, the mass transportation, the local economy and informal sector, the preservation of cultural Heritage, the natural heritage and the local Wisdom, the green Open Spaces, the emissions and energy variable are still low.

Recent Sustainability Performance in China: Strength-Weakness Analysis and Ranking of Provincial Cities

Since the 1992 United Nations Conference on environment and development held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and the adoption by China State Council in March 1994 of the “China Agenda 21”, sustainability has become a major issue in China urbanization policies. After more than two decades of development practice with a breakneck speed of urbanization, how sustainable is the recent development process in China? This paper combines the frameworks of Cities Prosperity Index (CPI) and Sustainable Cities Index (SCI) and propose a China Urban Sustainability Index by Fuzzy Evaluation (CUSI-FE) as a monitoring tool in the light of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With 5 years data covering 51 indicators, the model is tested to assess the performance of provincial cities in China during 5-years period from 2012 to 2016 (the year of the adoption of the SDGs). The results reveal that the overall sustainability level in China is barely average with lower performances in environmental sustainability. Indeed, a strength/weakness analysis, coupled with sensitivity analysis shows that the economic productivity and the large infrastructure development have had a strong energy cost and a sensible impact on environmental quality. Sustainable energy measures and industrial waste recycling are more likely to improve the sustainability of the cities, while the GDP growth will continue to contribute significantly also.

Identification of urban drinking water supply patterns across 627 cities in China based on supervised and unsupervised statistical learning

Urbanization, one of the predominant trends of the 21st century, places great stress on urban water supply networks. This paper aimed to identify the most important variables driving urban water supply patterns in China, a region which has seen rapid urban growth in the last few decades. In addition, a principal component analysis-informed urban water sustainability index was developed in order to benchmark cities. The research involved applying statistical learning and other analytical methods to 12 years of urban water supply data for 627 cities across China. The findings were as follows: (1) PCA showed that approximately 46.8% of variability in the data could be explained by two principal components. Component 1 (37.26%) was more closely associated with variables related to water supply and sale, supply pipelines, and water supply finance. C2 (9.51%) was clearly related to urban water prices and average per capita water use. (2) Random forest and XGBoost algorithms were effective in classifying cities according to their region, with model testing accuracies of 87.69% and 88.32% respectively. (3) Chinese cities have consistently suffered water loss/leakage rates above 20% since 2001, and water prices are closely associated with leakage. (4) China's urban water sustainability has increased by just 3.56% between 2001 and 2013; Southwest China saw the highest growth rate in urban water supply sustainability. The implications of our research effort will be useful for decision makers in water-stressed urban areas around the world who are seeking novel insights in how to leverage statistical learning techniques to gain insights into urban drinking water supply patterns.

Evaluation of Developmental Progress in Some Cities of Punjab, Pakistan, Using Urban Sustainability Indicators

Sustainable urbanization is a challenge to human beings in the modern era of technology. Cities all over the world are facing several problems due to urbanization and industrialization. Urban problems could be assessed through development of indices of urban sustainability on the basis of its three dimensions: environment, economics and social. The present study was conducted to identify indicators to develop indices for assessment of sustainability in some populated cities of Punjab. The study focused on the indicators based on environmental, economic and social development to develop a rational indicator system on the basis of secondary data collected from 2004 to 2014. A total of 40 indicators were identified to assess the urban sustainability progress in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala and Faisalabad cities. The result of the sub-indices indicated that poor performance was evident in the environmental sector, rather than in the economic and social sectors. The cities scored between 0.27 and 0.58 in environmental dimensions, showing a decreasing trend from 2004 to 2014. The declining trend of indices was due to population influx, rapid urbanization, reduction in green areas, industrialization, high level of atmospheric and water pollutants. In case of the economic sector, an increasing trend was observed which indicates the gradual improvement in living standards of people. In the social dimensions of the indicator system, less variations were observed among the cities and ranged between 0.49 and 0.58. Overall, the results of the urban sustainability index showed score was ranges between 0.41 to 0.52. None of the Punjab cities attained the position as a sustainable city (0.75) Lahore (0.52) and Faisalabad (0.52) were ranked as moderately sustainable cities, whereas, Rawalpindi (0.48), Gujranwala (0.47) and Multan (0.41) were ranked as weak sustainable cities. The study highlighted that the urban sustainability indicator system could be useful to determine the existing sustainability in cities of the developing countries for better resource management practices.

Assessment of a urban sustainability and life quality index for elderly

Assessment of a urban sustainability and life quality index for elderly