The balance between economic development, social progress and
environmental responsibility is known as sustainable development.
According to Kennedy et al. (2007), a sustainable city can
only be one for which the inflow of material and energy resources, and the
disposal of wastes, do not exceed the capacity of the city’s surrounding
environment. In other words, for achieving environmental sustainability urban
consumption must match or be below what the natural environment — such as
forests, soil and water bodies— can provide, and the resulting pollutants must
not overwhelm the environment’s ability to provide resources to humans and
other members of the ecosystem.
For achieving goal of building sustainable
cities, we should adopt the various indicators, parameters or value which
points to, provide information and describes the state of environment or area with a significance extending beyond that
directly associated with a parameter value.
The main challenge for today’s cities is to manage the heavy
dependence on ecosystem services, which results in the depletion of natural
resources and biodiversity and the efforts to prevent, reduce or mitigate and
adapt to climate change, while prioritizing public health and quality of life.
As
we know, researchers
agree that sustainability depends on social, economic, environmental and
governance factors. Before planning of
sustainable cities, those factors should be studied on the basis of suitable
indicators. So, the selection of the suitable indicators is important task for
city actors and planners.
Different people living in the different place have their own
value, so indicators must be able to take account different locations, people,
culture and institutions. So, indicators can play a vital role in how human
activities affect the environment.
A number of indicator tools are
described below.
|
Indicator |
Description |
|
China Urban
Sustainability Index |
The China
Urban Sustainability Index (Li et al., 2014), funded by the Urban China
Initiative, is a report into the sustainability of nearly 200 Chinese cities.
The indicator set was developed from the 2011 China Sustainability Index as
well as the China Urbanization Index, using the indicator framework set out
in the 2011 CSI. It is an extremely scalable tool, as it was developed for
cities ranging in size from 200 000 people to 20 million people. |
|
City
Blueprint |
City
Blueprints is a tool developed by Waternet Amsterdam and the KWR Water Cycle
Research Institute to provide a quick scan and baseline assessment of water
sustainability in a city. The overall aim is to provide European city
managers and other stakeholders with the base knowledge to implement
integrated urban water management and thereby contribute to overall
sustainability. |
|
EEA Urban
Metabolism Framework |
The European
Environmental Agency has studied the possibility of developing an Urban
Metabolism indicator system. This is a way to evaluate the sustainability of
a city based in metabolic flows rather than performance or current status. |
|
European
Green Capital Award |
The European
Green Capital Award is an annual award that recognises an outstanding
commitment to environmental practices in one European city (Berrini &
Bono, 2011). Cities are required to have at least 100 000 inhabitants to
participate, but there is no upper limit. |
|
European
Green City Tool |
This
self-assessment tool looks at city governance (so it represents yes/no
answers about the approach a city is taking and is not about quantitative,
scalar indicators) in the 12 indicator areas covered by the European Green
Capital Award. |
|
European
Green City Index |
The European
Green City Index is an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of 30 European
cities ranging in size from less than 1 million people to more than 3 million
people (Watson, 2009). |
|
European
Green Leaf Award |
Inspired by
the success of the Green Capital Award, the European Commission launched the
European Green Leaf Award in 2015, which is a similar competition, but for
smaller cities, i.e. with populations of between 20,000 and 100,000 people.
The European Green Leaf recognises the cities and towns which are most
committed to green growth and a better environment. |
|
Global City
Indicators Program |
The Global
City Indicators Facility (GCIF) has developed and implemented a standardized
global indicator set that allows for performance evaluation on an
international scale (Global Cities Institute, 2007). |
|
Indicators
for Sustainability |
The
Indicators for Sustainability report (Dekker et al., 2012) from Sustainable
Cities International took a different approach to the development of an
indicator set compared to the other frameworks mentioned so far. |
|
Reference
Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC) |
The
Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC) is a toolkit to help
European cities implement the sustainability goals of the Leipzig Charter on
Sustainable European Cities. It is a freely-accessible and flexible way for
cities to stimulate sustainable and integrated urban development in line with
Europe 2020 guidelines and objectives (van Dijken, Dorenbos & Kamphof,
2012). |
|
STAR
Community Rating System |
The
Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities (STAR) Community
Rating System is a toolbox developed for community leaders in the USA to
assess the sustainability of their community, set targets for the future, and
measure progress along the way (Lynch et al., 2011). |
|
Urban Audit
Cities Statistics |
The Urban
Audit, run by Eurostat, is currently the largest urban data collection effort
in the EU (Eurostat is the Directorate-General of the European Commission
responsible for collecting and distributing statistics for the European
Union, as well as harmonising data collection efforts across EU member
states). |