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The concept of urban sustainability is growing in urgency and salience for local urban governance, and indicator-based assessments represent a popular means for its operationalization. While much effort has been spent developing the technical aspects of these assessments, less attention has been given to research concerning their potential for influencing real-world urban governance processes. To address this issue, we put forward an assessment approach that systematically embeds the assessed indicators within their social and institutional contexts, thereby aiming to enhance the relevance of the assessment for local governance. Specifically, the contextual embedding is achieved through the analysis of ongoing controversies related to the assessed problem. We apply the approach to an assessment of the City of Geneva’s (Switzerland) housing system. As the case study demonstrates, the proposed assessment approach can elucidate a richer picture of the challenges identified in the assessment than a typical quantitative-only analysis of indicators. Therefore, it offers more complete support to local governance stakeholders for learning about and acting upon the problem under assessment. Overall, the work reported in this article aims to contribute to a productive alliance between sustainability assessment methodologies and urban governance stakeholders, thereby leading to more informed steering of cities towards sustainability.

Indicator-based assessment represents a popular means of operationalizing the concept of sustainability. A central yet often neglected aspect in the development of indicator sets concerns the elaboration of accompanying conceptual frameworks. Despite the pivotal role that such frameworks play, and the normative power they wield, little explicit guidance exists for their development. To address this issue, we analyze an extensive sample of conceptual frameworks drawn from 67 urban indicator initiatives. The results of the analysis elaborate an empirically-based typology of four principal and two emerging framework types, each based on a particular logic for creating conceptual categories for urban sustainability indicators. We also develop a comparison of the framework types in terms of their respective abilities to meet the different purposes that conceptual frameworks ideally serve in indicator set development. The results allow us to provide much-needed guidance for indicator set developers; first, by laying out the range of options available; second, by helping developers choose between types of frameworks in accordance with their particular aims. In addition, through analysis of how urban sustainability is de facto defined in indicator initiatives, we aim to make a conceptual contribution that advances our understanding of the meaning of this complex concept.

This chapter presents a comparative analysis of four Participatory Multi-Criteria Approaches (PMCAs) usually applied in sustainability assessments (SMCE, MCM, 3-SPM and INTEGRAAL). Such approaches are presented in detail and subsequently compared to each other according to three elementary yet crucial questions: who assesses?; what is assessed?; and how is it assessed? Results outline potential synergies and theoretical incompatibilities between the four approaches. The analysis also supports future PMCA applications when choosing one particular approach according to: key meta-principles (i.e., epistemological stance, methodological emphasis); logistical constraints (e.g., time, budget); local idiosyncrasies (e.g., pertinent geographical scales, power asymmetries); and organisational factors.

Over the past ten years, the Green Economy (GE) concept has gained momentum in both academia and policy-making arenas, leading to international programs in diverse sectors and driving national agendas all over the world. The concept is however highly controversial, partly due to its theoretical blurriness. The aims of this article are to shed light on the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the GE and to clarify its distinctive components. More concretely, the paper aims at understanding what GE definitions have in common as a conceptual whole (that is, which key features do they share?), and what makes them different to each other. For these purposes, the present study relies on an extensive review of both academic and grey literatures. Such a review yielded 95 GE definitions, as well as 45 definitions of Green Growth (GG), which is often interchangeably used with the former. All the definitions were methodically translated into a coded format thanks to a conceptual framework inductively developed by the research team. They were subsequently analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as network analysis. Results provide the basis for a common meta-understanding of the GE concept. Like Sustainable Development (SD), the GE is a multidimensional notion, whose focus is on the potential trade-offs and synergies between economic and environmental dimensions (without ignoring social issues). The results uncover several discourses underlying the GE narrative, such as “econocentric incrementalism”, “unlimited eco-efficiency” and “transformative GE”. The analysis outlines several key cleaving elements discriminating GE definitions, like the focus on either well-being or economic growth, or the consideration or not of environmental limits. Finally, GE definitions are put into a broader perspective according to their potential as theoretical backgrounds for handling the social-ecological challenges posed by the Anthropocene.

Today, the centrality of cities in the global sustainability challenge is widely acknowledged, and numerous initiatives have been developed worldwide for monitoring and comparing the sustainability performance of urban areas. However, the escalating abundance of indicators makes it difficult to understand what really counts in urban sustainability and how to properly select the most suitable indicators. By methodically collecting and mapping the diversity of available indicators, our work aims to elucidate the emphases, as well as the gaps, that exist in the way urban sustainability is currently translated into metrics, and to draw instructive lessons to support the development of future indicator sets. Representing the most comprehensive study ever performed in the field, this analysis relies on both an innovative research approach entailing multi- and cross-typological systematic analysis of indicators and an extensive data sample comprising 67 indicator sets (for a total of 2847 indicators) from academia and practice. The findings highlight the most frequent indicators in urban sustainability measurement initiatives, and demonstrate the prominence of social issues (e.g., quality of life, access to services, consumer behaviour, employment) and to a lesser extent, of environmental stakes. In contrast, urban sustainability indicator sets generally pay marginal attention to political questions (e.g., participation, policies, institutional settings), gender issues and distributional concerns. From a systemic point of view, the analysis reveals the strong emphasis placed on the status of actual and potential resources as well as the satisfaction of current needs. The study further highlights seven key lessons on how to deal with three typical tensions faced during indicator selection processes: (i) parsimony vs. comprehensiveness; (ii) context-specificity vs. general comparability; and (iii) complexity vs. simplicity. The directly implementable recommendations proposed herein will support both scholars and practitioners in the design of future urban sustainability measurement initiatives.

Cities account for 75% of resource consumption and 80% of CO2 emissions. With rising urbanization, achieving urban sustainability becomes crucial. The Circular Economy (CE) concept has been proposed to reduce resource consumption, although its link to sustainability remains unclear from theoretical and practical perspectives. This paper provides an in-depth comparative analysis of 57 indicator sets used in academia or practice to measure either CE in urban areas or urban sustainability. Indicators were extracted and categorized according to three conceptual frameworks, namely: the STEEP categories, the Sustainable Development Goals, and inductively-created thematic groups. The similarities among the 57 sets were analyzed to derive clusters. Results show that CE represents a subset of urban sustainability, while offering more indicators to assess specific thematic groups (e.g., waste). In the discussion, the value added by targeting a CE rather than sustainability is questioned, and insights are provided to support actors involved in an urban transition to develop well-informed city targets. The results offer theoretical, practical, and methodological contributions, and aid involved actors, especially those leading urban transition agendas, to unravel the conceptual link between CE and sustainability, specifically at the urban scale.

Urban sustainability is today commonly considered to be a crucial determinant of global sustainable development, and indicator-based assessments represent a popular means of operationalizing this complex concept. An important aspect of these assessments concerns the elaboration of accompanying conceptual frameworks. Despite the pivotal role of such frameworks, they are often developed in an unstructured manner, without consideration of their potential purposes and impacts, and without awareness and evaluation of available options. Here, we discuss this topic based on both theoretical considerations and the analysis of the conceptual frameworks of 67 urban sustainability indicator initiatives. The discussion makes two contributions: First, we provide guidance for assessment developers for leveraging the potential of conceptual frameworks. Second, considering the analyzed frameworks as de facto definitions of urban sustainability allows us to advance understanding of the meaning of this complex concept, and to critically discuss the conceptual shortcomings that remain in current assessment practice.

Natural Resources are essential inputs for economic and social development. However, unsustainable resource use has led to environmental degradation and resource depletion, endangering the well-being of humanity and the environment. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a plan of action to address these issues. The Green Economy (GE) concept is described by various institutions as a vehicle to move towards sustainable resource management. This paper demonstrates the linkages between SDGs and Natural Resources though the systematic analysis of 494 GE indicators, derived from 12 distinct frameworks focusing on GE or on Green Growth. This articulation provides insights to gain an improved understanding of the links between SDGs and Natural Resources and interpret their inherent complexity. GE indicators focus unevenly on SDG, although each SDG is related to at least one resource category. Two complementary typologies were applied to the Materials subcategory to highlight additional characteristics, leading to the proposal of an adaptable analytical framework for the assessment of sustainability issues and GE transitions.