Urban Sustainability Index Research Articles

Measuring the biophysical dimension of urban sustainability

An ecological economics perspective on urban sustainability embraces a biophysical view which emphasizes the dependence of cities on vast quantities of natural capital from various sources and spatial scales, and the generation of urban wastes which impact the local, regional and global systems. In recent years, several sets of urban sustainability indicators and indices have been developed. However, only a few consider the complex multi-scale interactions between the urban activities and the environment. Furthermore, most existing indices use a relative evaluation approach instead of an absolute approach that is needed when dealing with ecological thresholds. The paper introduces a new urban biophysical sustainability index whose framework includes: the city environmental quality, use of natural resources, and GHG emissions. Each contains topics for assessment related to local, regional and global scales and associated indicators. Standard and optimum values were determined for each indicator and a formula is provided for grading each indicator measurement. The integration of those grades allows for generation of a compound score of each topic, category, spatial scale and the entire urban biophysical sustainability performance. It then demonstrates the index in three major Israeli cities.

Are Green Cities Nice Places to Live? Examining the Link between Urban Sustainability and Quality of Life

The growing importance of nonmarket assets such as the environment, combined with the unprecedented availability of high- resolution data, has renewed broad interest in quantifying sustainability at different spatial levels. Policyrelated decision making requires that potential sustainability measures meet three key requirements: (i) sustainability metrics need to be comprehensive so that they reflect the experience of representative households, (ii) sustainability indices need to be comparable across different geographic scales, and (iii) measures of sustainability need to be economically meaningful, ideally tying into the larger system of national accounts. However, conventional sustainability indices do not tend to meet these criteria, which renders them inappropriate for public- policy efforts. The subjectivity and theoretical inconsistency of common sustainability indices presents the biggest obstacle for their adoption as valid public policy targets. This article introduces an urban sustainability index that is based on a theoretically consistent, empirical measure of quality of life. Specifically, this article shows that greenness of cities has a strong positive correlation with urban quality of life, suggesting that the greener the city, the nicer a place to live it is. This is largely because energy efficiency is capitalized into economic activity and ultimately into urban quality of life. This relationship appears to hold across cities of all sizes, clearly emphasizing the direct link between progressive environmental policy and locational desirability. The takeaway message is straightforward: More “greenness” correlates to higher quality of life in urban areas.

Toward an urban transport sustainability index: an European comparison

IntroductionThe aim of paper is to cluster policies of sustainable mobility in order to define an essential set of specific Transport Performance Indicators (TPI). TPIs are standardized measures suitable for analysis in order to appraise the feasibility of a transport policy or an infrastructural project. Data collection of TPIs is a crucial phase, but data detection and monitoring are not standardized at the city level. Thus, there is no a standard for data collection and storing, this aspect makes much difficult to compare different city contexts. This issue is critical and bounds the analysis of built scenarios. A standardized set of transport performance indicators becomes, hence, essential for monitoring the implemented policies.Methodology and resultsThe paper answers to some of these questions, providing a specific set of sustainable and transport performance indicators to evaluate effects of policy measures. Furthermore, it shows a comparative analysis of different European cities in terms of development, sustainability and infrastructures, by using transport performance indicators. A Normalized Transport Sustainability Index has been built using identified TPIs, in order to measure and hence to compare the whole sustainability of adopted policies in different urban areas. The same NTSI allows to appraise the expected results and thus to tune the policy measures.ConclusionWe can affirm that an high value of sustainability is associated, in general, to small-medium cities in term both population and urban area; nevertheless, for large cities, the adoption of policy measures, from a side, to control the urban sprawl, from the other side, to manage the urban transport demand with an adequate public transport development allows to achieve a more sustainable mobility.

Sustentabilidade e condições de vida em áreas urbanas: medidas e determinantes em duas regiões metropolitanas brasileiras

This paper develops an Urban Sustainability Index System as part of a broader effort to provide better quality data and statistical analysis for local environmental decision-making. We show that urban sustainability can be measured in a comprehensive and synthetic way. In providing fair comparison across cities while keeping sensibility to local context, this index system can be used by policy-makers as a powerful tool to identify critical trends and policy gaps. This Urban Sustainability Index System has been applied to 57 cities in the metropolitan areas of Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The results indicate two different paths in relation to sustainability. The first is characterized by a gap between environmental quality and human development, leading away from sustainability. It is followed by the core cities and highly industrialized ones in both metropolitan areas. The second leads towards sustainability and is followed by a heterogeneous group of cities in both regions.

Sustentabilidade ambiental da água consumida no Município do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

To propose an urban water sustainability index based on indicators that may serve as a foundation for developing planned actions concerning water resources. Eleven indicators (covering aspects of water and sewage) were selected based on the parameters of Brazil's National Water and Sanitation Information System (Sistema Nacional de Informação sobre Saneamento) for the years 2000 and 2001. A score and a weight were assigned to each indicator. Based on that, the urban water sustainability index (UWSI) was calculated, using the formula UWSI = product (I(i)(pi)), where I(i) is the score attributed to each indicator i, ranging from 0 to 100, and p(i) is the weight for each indicator sigma(i=1)(n) p(i) = 1, where n is the number of indicators considered). The lowest water quality is indicated by an index value of 0, and the best by an index value of 100. The urban water sustainability index for the city of Rio de Janeiro was 58.99 in 2000, and it rose to 59.57 in 2001, indicating water of good quality in both those years. The improvement in the quality of the water resources between 2000 and 2001 in the city of Rio de Janeiro is possibly the result of the implementation, in the 1990s, of an environmental management program in the Rio de Janeiro region. Environmental planning that includes rational use of water resources and methods to prevent their destruction is crucial to sustaining society.