Indicator-based multi-criteria urban sustainability assessment under varying policy priorities

The international political community currently accepts the sustainable city concept as the mechanism through which society can address its economic, social and ecological urban problems. The aim of this study was therefore to compare, and then rank, 19 alternative global cities against a family of 17 sustainability criteria. The chosen family of sustainability criteria represent economic, environmental and social aspects of urban sustainability. Cities were then assessed against four differing policy priorities, as defined by four differing decision makers: (1) overall sustainability, (2) economic sustainability, (3) environmental sustainability, and (4) social sustainability. Both weighted-sum and multi-criteria aids were employed to assess the city decision problem from weak and strong sustainability perspectives. The chapter concludes that a multi-criteria, non-compensatory approach is more useful for structuring and appraising the complex and dynamic city system through the implementation of a strong sustainability approach. Of the 19 cities, Stockholm ranked highest under three policy priorities, with Munich ranking highest under economic sustainability. This chapter explains the choice of sustainability indicators and the two methods used to identify the highest-ranking alternative from the given set of possible alternatives: first, a weighted-sum approach, and second, a multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA) approach, ELECTRE III. Highlights: • A robust system of urban sustainability indicators is proposed. • Multi-criteria decision aid is a tool most suitable for sustainability assessment of the complex urban systems. • The non-compensatory nature of ELECTRE III is crucial to the ranking of cities. • Stockholm is ranked as most sustainable out of 19 global cities. This chapter aims to discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals approach at the city level and offers policy advice on benchmarking urban sustainability using a compact and robust set of sustainability indicators. It seeks to address the challenge – 19 cities have been identified and a selection procedure developed in order to decide which of the cities is the most sustainable in terms of its economic, environmental and social performance. The chapter describes the main features of the study that was undertaken to assess metropolitan sustainability across 19 cities, with the particular aim of defining and appraising urban sustainability criteria in order to produce a ranked order of cities