The application of urban sustainability indicators - A comparison between various practices

Urban population has been increasing and it is estimated to reach 70% of the total population in the world by 2050. Governments are facing greater challenges every time in providing inhabitants with a good quality of life in their cities. Many cities around the world have developed sustainable urban development plans for leading their urbanization process towards a desired status of urban sustainability. Urban sustainability indicators have been selected as main elements for communicating the status of the practice, which help to determine how successful strategies and policies enforced have been in the attainment of sustainability goals. Different practices use different indicators according to their particular needs, and these have been selected under different methods. However, whilst there are cases where urban sustainability indicators are effectively in use, the experiences gained from each practice have not been shared and used for the development of new urban development plans and for improving the decision-making process in the selection of indicators. This paper examines 9 different practices and proposes a comparative basis, namely, International Urban Sustainability Indicators List (IUSIL), for allowing the better understanding of drivers and goals of each practice and identifying under what circumstances various practices selected their indicators. Discussions made on the comparative analysis are categorized in four different dimensions: environmental, economic, social and governance. Research results show how comparative basis can lead to knowledge sharing between different practices, which can be used to guide the selection of indicators of sustainable urbanization plans and improve the effective communication of the status of practices. The study not only reveals how different indicators are selected but also suggests the need for consistent processes of choosing indicators based on the benchmarks obtained from best practices. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.