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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]

Highlights • There is a need for a systematic approach for compact and green cities. • Concepts from smart growth and green infrastructure are found to be compatible. • We developed a hierarchical target system for smart-compact-green cities. • The targets cover smart environment, multifunctionality, government, governance. • The systemic framework can be used for spatial monitoring and planning analysis. Abstract In contrast to the ongoing worldwide uncontrolled expansion of urban development resulting in sprawled cities, compact cities have been argued by planners and researchers to be the more sustainable urban form. However, in compact cities, it has been shown that a low proportion of green spaces jeopardizes the sufficient supply of urban ecosystem services. This suggests that there remains a deficiency in clear visions for operationalizing compact and green cities. To remediate this, this paper introduces a systemic conceptual framework for compact and green cities by combining the concepts of smart growth and green infrastructure. The indicator-based, smart-compact-green city framework includes two aspects: 1) smart compact cities (considering the need to limit urban sprawl through smart growth) and 2) smart green cities (reflecting the preservation and (re-)development of urban green infrastructure). The paper suggests that there is the need to balance these two aspects to develop a systemic approach towards smart-compact-green cities. A hierarchical target system grounded on four characters for smart compact and smart green cities is developed. Smart-compact-green cities can be characterized through a 1) smart environment of compact and green cities, 2) smart multifunctionality of compact and green cities (economic, social, environmental), 3) smart government for compact and green cities and 4) smart governance for compact and green cities. The characters comprise twelve factors defined by 39 indicators for smart compact cities and 44 indicators for smart green cities, respectively. The systemic framework can support researchers and practitioners to develop visions of how existing or future cities can approach smart-compact-green cities in mainstreaming the ecology of and for cities by better understanding the complexity of urban systems and providing a basis for a systematic spatial monitoring. [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: There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

The development and application of urban sustainability indicators has gained momentum in recent years, especially since the generation of specific urban indicators for the Agenda 2030. Urban sustainability is a broad concept involving many dimensions, therefore the generation of a short, but comprehensive list of indicators is a significant challenge. In this paper, we present a set of 29 indicators designed to characterise urban sustainability in Chile, which we also expect to be relevant to other cities, particularly in the Global South where issues of poverty and inequality are prevalent. We first outline the process of selecting the indicators through expert consultation. Then we present selected indicators, and the variables used to measure them. Subsequently the set is applied to six Chilean cities that are diverse in terms of population, socio-economic conditions and geography. We show that some indicators highlight negative nationwide trends that are common to the cities, while other indicators reveal notable differences that can be traced back to their local contexts. The CEDEUS indicators provide a complement to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for cities; therefore, a comparison is made with the SDGs. The indicator development process is critically examined and policy recommendations are given. • An expert-based process is presented to identify local urban sustainability indicators. • 5 sustainability categories with 29 indicators were identified. • A measurement variable is presented for each indicator. • Indicator variables are used to characterise 6 cities in Chile of different size, economic and geographical context. • Relationship between the indicator set and the 2030 Agenda's Sustainable Development Goals are evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]