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Cities located in the Arctic often have extreme geographic and environmental contexts and unique sociopolitical and economic trajectories that, when combined with amplified effects of climate change in the region, impact future sustainable development. Well-recognized and standardized sustainable development indicator (SDI) frameworks such as ISO 37120 or UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index are often used to compare data across cities globally using comprehensive sets of indicators. While such indexes help characterize progress toward development and guide short- and long-term decision-making, they often lack relevance to specific contexts or characterize future visions of urban growth. To evaluate the extent of these deficiencies and to provide a comparative analysis of approaches to sustainable urban growth in the Arctic, this paper analyzes city planning documents for five northern cities - Anchorage (USA), Utqiagvik (USA), Reyjavik (ISL), Iqaluit, (CAN), Whitehorse, (CAN) - for goals, targets, and indicators and compare these to thematic areas and indicators defined by ISO 37120:2018 Sustainable Cities and Communities. The results confirm that although international SDI frameworks may be useful for comparative analysis of cities across diverse regions, they exclude important local factors that influence goal-oriented urban sustainability planning strategies employed in the Arctic region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban green infrastructures are now considered key elements in improving residents' quality of life and creating an appropriate framework for the development of sustainable cities. One of the most efficient method to evaluate the state and performance of urban green infrastructure is using different types of indicators. The indicators for evaluating the benefits, ecosystem services and the role of green infrastructures for the process of sustainable development represent important tools for decision and policy makers. Indicators provide information that can be easily interpreted by decision and policy makers and they facilitate the process of planning, monitoring and evaluation of green infrastructure in urban areas. The focus of our study is to establish which indicators are used for underlining the structural and functional diversity of urban green infrastructures. This paper aims to highlight the indicators and indices being used in Romanian urban areas for measuring their sustainability that include green infrastructures, in the wider understanding of the concept. Throughout the paper, different examples of indicators and indices are provided, emphasizing that by using the proper set of indicators and indices, city authorities can tag a sustainable development label for certain areas. However, an unbiased assessment using some sets of indicators and indices are not always providing unbiased or realistic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthy built environments place people and communities at the heart of urban planning, encouraging decision-making based on human health, well-being and environmental sustainability. This paper describes the development of a set of indicators to assist in this endeavour—by translating and linking the research evidence base with policy-makers and other practitioners. The paper describes how the indicators were chosen, contextualized and subsequently structured to maximize useability for urban planners and health professionals working together to improve community health and neighbourhood sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Since the birth of the sustainable development concept and its application to urban planning and construction projects, countless sustainability indicator sets have appeared. This paper analyses the problems posed by these sets and the need to establish a method to identify and select an indicator set which includes every participant involved in the life cycle of a project, to find a proper balance between all actors. Sustainability is proposed as an opportunity for improvement throughout the project. Thus, we have developed a methodology to identify, classify and prioritise sustainability indicators based on risk management standards. The application of this method to infrastructure projects in Spain will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed method and is the first step to develop an indicator set for civil engineering projects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A bibliometric analysis of three decades of research is provided. • The field's evolution over four time periods is analyzed. • Over time the field has become diversified to cover multiple sustainability dimensions. • Environmental aspects have received relatively more attention. • More focus on socio-economic aspects is needed. Following the recognition of the significance of urban areas for achieving sustainable development in the late 1980′s, first studies on 'urban sustainability assessment' were published in early 1990s. Since then, the field has grown rapidly, with over 300 papers published annually in recent years. The main objective of this study is to present a bibliometric analysis of about thirty years of research on urban sustainability assessment. The literature database includes 3877 articles published in the Web of Science. VOSviewer and SciMAT are two science mapping software tools that were utilized for this purpose. VOSviewer is utilized to detect major focus areas and to identify influential authors, publications, and journals using various network analysis techniques such as term co-occurrence, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling. Also, SciMAT is used to understand how the intellectual base of the field has evolved over time and what are the major themes that have contributed to this evolution. For this purpose, the study interval was divided into four sub-periods (i.e., 1991–2000; 2001–2009; 2010–2015; and 2016–2020). Results show that this field has initially been mainly focused on few themes but has later become more diversified to acknowledge the multi-dimensional characteristics of urban sustainability. Despite this, environmental aspects are still dominant and major socio-economic issues such as equity, justice, and public engagement are not well represented. Sustainable development indicators, energy, green infrastructure, water, land use, and urban design are major thematic areas, with the first three playing more important roles in structuring the development of the field. This study can be used as a point of reference for those interested in gaining more knowledge about urban sustainability assessment and its evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]