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In October 2018, the Spanish SDSN Network, REDS, launched the SDG Spanish Cities Index report summarizing the progress of 100 Spanish cities toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This study, developed in collaboration with the Technical University of Madrid, follows the methodology used by the Global SDG Index and Dashboards and the US Cities Index, which SDSN co-produces annually to assess SDG performance at both the national and international levels. This study, previously developed by the same researchers, identifies the most suitable indicators, metrics and urban data to measure the commitment and degree of compliance with SDG 17 for a selection of Spanish cities. It provides, through a set of 85 indicators, a unique vision of their sustainable development and allows monitoring the implementation of the SDGs at the local level in the Spanish context. In this paper, the analysis of their interactions using this dataset has been systematized. This is an innovative first step in defining the path toward urban sustainable development to make policies happen: dependencies among the goals in terms of potential interactions need to be evaluated in the Spanish context. Those results, improvements and applicability are presented and discussed in the following to identify action priorities and raise awareness of local governments and policymakers. It concludes that major efforts are required to increase sustainability and suggests an open framework that can be gradually improved as more data become available.

Data analytics is a key resource to analyze cities and to find their strengths and weaknesses to define long-term sustainable strategies. On the one hand, urban planning is geared to adapting cities’ strategies towards a qualitative, intelligent, and sustainable growth. On the other hand, institutions are geared towards open governance and collaborative administration models. In this context, sustainability has become a global concern for urban development, and the sustainable development goals (SDGs), defined by United Nations, are the framework to be followed to define the new city goals and to measure the advances of the policies implemented over recent years. The main objective of this research is to explain the methods and results of the application of a city assessment tool for measuring the impact of public policies on the socioeconomic and environmental structure of a city. It addresses the case study of the evaluation of the strategic plan “Diseña 2020” of the municipality of Alcobendas (Madrid, Spain, with 116.037 inhabitants), the document used to communicate the actions needed to achieve the city goals during the planning exercise. A selection of urban indicators has been aligned with the SDGs defined in the Agenda 2030 to develop a tool for the measurement of the impacts of policies in economic, social, and ecological terms. Through this set of indicators, the tool is able to quantify the impact of the policies on the city and the SDGs and to support the decision-making processes of the administration. The set of urban indicators is divided into five areas: economic development and employment, sustainable development, open government, social responsibility, and quality of life. The data evolution, across the recent years 2012–2018, is used to monitor and benchmark the effects of the applied policies. In addition, Alcobendas can be compared with other Spanish and European cities with similar characteristics; it makes possible assessing the achievement of the city’s strategic areas, incorporating the current trends and fostering the SDGs. Thanks to the quantitative comparable results and the objective approach, this research shows a methodology based on indicators that could be applied and scaled to other cities to generate a common framework for measuring the impact of public policies on cities.

Citizens’ attention to Open Data initiatives and Open Government policies is growing rapidly, but fragmentation in their implementation makes for a confusing approach. This research aims to bring structure to their assessment by analyzing 63 selected Spanish cities and 110 selected Italian cities and mapping their content. The analysis shows that (i) Open Data portals are not developed consistently; (ii) the various levels of public administration are not coordinated in their Open Data strategies; (iii) however, there are some good practices to be followed and underlined. Research into Open Data initiatives could benefit from previous examples regarding the success and failure factors of an Open Government. This paper highlights the main trends for an Open Data portal strategy in Spanish and Italian cities from the citizens’ point of view. The basic content, structure of the websites, quality, accessibility, crosscutting nature and data visualization of the datasets have been assessed from the user’s perspective. Currently, Spain has 115 open-data portals embedded in datos.gov.es (Government of Spain 2016), and Italy has 40 open-data portals at the city level. Open Data initiatives are the basis to achieve transparency, participation and collaboration, and also to establish the pillars for the integration of intelligent policies.