Elsevier

Cities

Volume 101, June 2020, 102683
Cities

Localising urban sustainability indicators: The CEDEUS indicator set, and lessons from an expert-driven process

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102683Get rights and content

Highlights

  • 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

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.

Introduction

The term “sustainable development” was popularised by the publication Our Common Future, known as the Brundtland Report, in 1987. In general terms, sustainable development is understood as a strategy that aims to promote harmony between humanity and nature, based on inter- and intra-generational considerations (WCED, 1987). This strategy became the basis of the UN development agenda from the Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Agenda 21, the action plan for the twenty-first century, was designed to ground this thinking in planning and management at the local level, and this Agenda included a chapter on the importance of indicators for monitoring and assessment (chapter 40). However, the Agenda was promoted in a highly selective manner around the world, with countries such as Germany and Spain enthusiastically mainstreaming it, while the USA and many others effectively ignored it. A particular absence in all applications, however, was the lack of effective indicators at the local level, in spite of the UN national level sustainable development indicator design process led by the Commission for Sustainable Development, with three iterations of the indicator set in 1996, 2001 and 2006. In parallel, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were launched in 2000 to monitor progress on international development to 2015, while we are currently in the implementation phase of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the Agenda 2030 process (United Nations, 2015) as the follow-up to the MDGs within the context of Agenda 2030, the global sustainable development strategy, 2015–2030. Of the 17 SDGs goals, it is Goal 11 that tackles the challenge of Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements, and which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (United Nations, 2015, p. 14). It is this Goal that will also underpin the aims of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) agreed at Habitat III in October 2016. However, in spite of these advances since Rio '92, the absence of local urban indicators remains as critical as it was in the early 1990s. This is the context for the work presented in this article, which highlights the methodological challenges experienced in the creation of an indicator set relevant to the contemporary challenges, and considerable diversity of Chilean cities.

Agenda 21 called on countries to develop indicators for sustainable development, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development indicates that countries have the responsibility to follow-up and review the progress made in implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2018a, United Nations, 2018b) — but if progress at the national level has been slow, at the local, urban scale it has been at best partial, and at worst, absent. As Simon et al. (2016, 60) note: “If the urban SDG is to prove useful as a tool as intended for encouraging local and national authorities alike to make positive investments in the various components of urban sustainability transitions, then it must be widely relevant, acceptable and practicable.

The need to monitor urban sustainable development has been renewed by Agenda 2030, the SDGs and the NUA. In the case of Chile, it is also linked to the approval of a National Urban Development Policy in 2014, that also highlighted the importance of urban metrics to monitor progress. The expert-process associated with the work in this paper has been generated by the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CEDEUS), a national priority area research and policy initiative with funding from the National Research Council (Conicyt) that includes two universities: the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Universidad de Concepción. This paper reports on the process and the results, i.e. an urban sustainability indicator set and its application in 6 Chilean cities. Its objective is to communicate the methodological challenges inherent in the process in order flag-up obstacles and potential responses for similar work undertaken elsewhere. From Agenda 21 to Agenda 2030, the theme of cooperation for sustainable development has been highlighted, and this involves sharing of methods and experiences of planning and implementation. It is this vein that this paper seeks to make a contribution to indicator design and development for more effective and sustainable urban development planning.

Sustainability indicator sets can provide a comprehensive, easy to understand, and reliable picture of the sustainability conditions of a municipal area, a city or a country, with the intention of informing decision-making (Rinne, Lyytimäki, & Kautto, 2013; United Nations, 1992). These indicators reflect different components or dimensions of the complex system that is, in this case, the city (Morrison & Pearce, 2000). When aggregated, indicators can produce indices or other synthetic indicators, such as carbon and ecological footprints, Genuine Progress and material flow analysis, which frequently involve the conversion of measures to common units and the definition of weights to each measure in relation to their importance (see Rogmans & Ghunaim, 2016). Indicators have also been used for certification and rating systems, such as LEED and BREAM, and the ISO 37120 (2014), which define and establish methodologies to measure the performance of services and quality of life, applicable to any city, municipality or local government — independent of its size and location in a comparable and verifiable manner (ISO, 2014). All of these are regarded as positive contributions to assessing the objectivity of sustainability choices in urban projects (Ahvenniemi, Huovila, Pinto-Seppä, & Airaksinen, 2017; Chastenet et al., 2016). There are many assessment tools based on indicators that have been developed to support political decision making, environmental management, advocacy, participation, consensus building, research and analysis (Komeily & Srinivasan, 2016), however, many structural problems remain in terms of their design and use.

Indicators have multiple limitations. Although they can provide information about a particular system, they cannot demonstrate causal links or tell the whole story, because they can only “indicate” and have to rely on available data, which is often of poor quality, in temporal and spatial terms (Morrison & Pearce, 2000). The design of sustainability indicators in particular is a challenge due to the complexity of different types of data, criteria, information gaps, vagueness, ill-definition and uncertainties when combining diverse variables (Komeily & Srinivasan, 2016). Despite this complexity, the optimistic assumption remains that, with better information and a rational planning system, decision-makers will be able to make better decisions. However, this optimism is rarely tested and it is likely that many indicators fall into the third of Rinne et al.'s (2013) categories of indicator use:

  • 1.

    Instrumental: direct link between indicators and decision outcomes,

  • 2.

    Conceptual: indicators as tools for new ideas, learning and understanding, and

  • 3.

    Political: indicators are (ab)used to justify decisions already taken.

The political nature of indicators is also reflected in the work of King (2016), who defines a functional classification based on a discrete framing of outcome values and purposes, which can be characterised as having intrinsic and extrinsic value. The intrinsic value is defined by the internal structure being measured, and the extrinsic value relates to the characteristics of other systems and elements in the environment. The intrinsic functions are those pertaining to leadership and organised stakeholders, while extrinsic functions are those pertaining to citizen involvement and management of the commons. Based on this framing, the author sets up a dichotomy between the “leaders' interests” and the “general public interests” as a “top-down” versus “bottom-up” approach. Despite this divergence and the risk of ‘capture’ by decision-makers (as in Rinne et al.'s, 2013 third category), sustainability indicators have the potential to (i) measure and improve a government's operational efficiency and accountability (intrinsic), and also to (ii) address public aims and aspirations (extrinsic). It is for these reasons, based on the first and second of the categories, that CEDEUS sought to contribute to national urban indicator development in Chile, and the monitoring of the National Urban Development Policy (2014) in particular.

According to Pintér, Hardi, Martinuzzi, and Hall (2012), the starting point of sustainability assessment is to develop a conceptual framework that defines the issues to be measured, followed by the measurement of a baseline and follow-up measures to determine progress. This is useful if the measures are standardised and comparable. A good indicator system can not only support decision-making but also encourage participation of stakeholders and society in developing a shared sense of vision for action.

On the global stage, to encourage participation and develop a shared vision of the city is also the purpose of Goal 11 of the SDGs, with its 15 indicators for monitoring progress on the Goal to, “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Although Sustainable Development Goal 11 focuses specifically on cities, there are other indicators across the other 16 goals that are pertinent to cities, such as SDG 6 on the provision of water and sanitation, or SDG 13 on climate change (Hardoy, 2017; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018). These were taken into consideration by the experts in the development of the indicator set presented here. Despite the definition of global sets of indicators, their use and meaning needs to be adjusted to the context of each country, its problems, its culture, its state of (economic) development and the data publicly available, among other factors. While some argue that standardised indicators are useful for the comparison of data, problems and contexts, i.e. enabling benchmarking, others argue that a single set of common indicators cannot be applied to all cities, because they should reflect the particular cultural, political and institutional contexts (Moreno Pires, Fidélis, & Ramos, 2014). Therefore, whereas the UN is making an effort in creating standardised indicators for countries, there is a continuous growth in the definition of “local” sustainable development indicators (Moreno Pires et al., 2014). Ultimately, they should complement each other and reveal both the intrinsic and extrinsic value of indicator uses for effective decision-making. It is the development of local indicators that is key to this article, but with the additional criterion that these should, and could, provide the basis for other local contexts – in Latin America for example – with appropriate adaptation and selective substitutions.

The Latin America and Caribbean region (LAC) is considered to be the most urbanised in the world, with almost 80% of the region's inhabitants living in cities in 2012 (UN-Habitat, 2012). Although the urban population is growing at a slower pace over recent decades, the urban development of medium-size cities and metropolitan areas has increased the range of environmental, social, and economic challenges (Dobbs et al., 2018; Jordán, Rehner, & Samaniego, 2010); this is the case for Chilean cities. Of particular relevance for Chile are those challenges relating to equity. Urban inequalities have had an impact in terms of access to green spaces, and also public services such as sanitation and transport (Borsdorf & Hidalgo, 2010; Pauchard & Barbosa, 2013). Other aspects that are particularly relevant to LAC cities are their high population density, high building density, the proportion of the urban areas used to build public housing and informal settlements, the low urban vegetation cover, and fragmented green spaces (Dobbs et al., 2018; Isendahl & Smith, 2013; Roberts, 2005). Socioeconomic status is the predominant factor that determines access to green — regardless of climate (Celemin, Marcos, & Velázquez, 2013; Dobbs et al., 2018; Scopelliti et al., 2016). At the same time construction of – often informal – settlements can eliminate vegetation and expose vulnerable populations to disaster risks if settlements are founded on slopes and in riverbeds (Benitez, Perez-Vasquez, Nava-Tablada, Equihua, & Lavarez-Palacios, 2012; Dobbs et al., 2018). LAC cities have also been defined by neoliberal development models, with Chile leading in this dimension, that have impacted state-led urban planning, with real estate-oriented instruments to the fore (Dobbs et al., 2018; Roberts, 2005).

In response to the particular socio-economic, socio-ecological and political contexts that predominate in the region, there have been several attempts to ground the global sustainable development agenda in a more regionally-appropriate strategy (Burgess, 2003), e.g. the Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1996 and 2006 (OEA, 1996a, OEA, 1996b), the LAC Initiative for Sustainable Development (ILAC), and the Sustainability Assessment in LAC (ESALC). While the ILAC was adopted in 2002 by LAC governments during the World Summit on Environment and Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa (UNEP, 2008), ESALC was led by the Division of Sustainable Development of ECLAC (CEPAL) in 2004 with the objective of using a combination of environmental, social and economic indicators in a systemic framework (Quiroga Martínez, 2007). ESALC was rolled out in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic (Quiroga Martínez, 2007). Private companies have also become increasingly involved, as in the Latin American Green City Index – in the vein of Smart City promotion – developed by The Economist group and sponsored by Siemens (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2010).

The Chilean National Commission for the Environment (CONAMA, now a Ministry of Environment since 2010) worked on the development of a system of indicators to monitor sustainable development in the 1990s at a regional level, but there was no implementation process (Blanco, Wautiez, Llavero, & Riveros, 2001; Quiroga Martínez, 2001). There have also been pilot exercises in Santiago de Chile, from the analysis of its ecological footprint by Wackernagel (1994) and others, to the indicator set developed by an expert-led process (as part of the Risk Habitat Megacity project, 2007–11) including the Regional Government, Ministry of Environment, and researchers from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, the University of Chile and the Germany Helmholtz Association (Barton & Kopfmüller, 2017; Kopfmüller, Barton, & Salas, 2012). However, in the framework of the National Urban Development Policy of 2014, an extensive indicator set for cities has recently been generated, called SIEDU, and it is currently in the hands of the National Statistical Office to oversee its implementation (UNDP, 2017). In parallel with the generation of this SIEDU indicator set, the Chilean Centre for Sustainable Urban Development (CEDEUS) created a Working Group in 2014 with researchers from different disciplines to develop a more synthetic set of indicators — in the knowledge that the former government driven exercise was designed to create a larger database of urban indicators rather than a more limited set with greater potential for influencing local authorities and civil society participation. In this paper, we report on the methods and results of CEDEUS' expert-led initiative, involving the participation of academic experts in eight disciplines, including public health, urban geography, transport engineering, urban sociology, architecture, environmental engineering, environmental science and urban planning. The research question that the group sought to answer was: Is it possible to find a small but comprehensive set of sustainability indicators to characterise and monitor urban development of Chilean cities considering their differences in size, climate and economic conditions? Based on this question, four main research objectives were developed:

  • To define a manageable set of indicators that characterise urban sustainability with a focus on Chilean cities;

  • To operationalise the indicators through the selection of variables;

  • To apply the indicators to selected cities of different sizes and climatic zone in order to (3a) assess whether the set was able to reveal differences among cities, and (3b) reveal the sustainability condition of each; and

  • To define sustainability standards for each indicator.

In the following section, we outline factors that were taken into account in the iterative indicator selection and development process of the Working Group, including issues of definition and criteria. This is followed by a section on how the set of urban indicators was developed and the selection of variables. The 29 indicators and an analysis of the results in six cities follow. Finally, we discuss this applied process, the indicators, indicator and variable criteria, and compare the set to the UN SDGs. The article closes with reflections on the replicability of these indicators across the Global South.

Section snippets

The construction of urban sustainability indicators

The construction of urban sustainability indicators has been influenced by the development of indicators in different fields, such as environmental and natural resource development, health sciences, economic development, and social development (Waas et al., 2014). As stated earlier, indicator use may serve different purposes that can be instrumental, conceptual and political, consequently different indicators are useful for different types of decisions. Sometimes the very same indicators can

Methods

Given our four objectives of defining, testing and applying a manageable set of urban sustainability indicators, a general work plan and workflow chart for the initiative was outlined. This work plan is shown in Fig. 1, and contains 5 general phases: In Phase 1 a set of indicators was elaborated; in Phase 2, variables were defined, usually one for each indicator, allowing the measurement of an indicator's status and progress; in Phase 3, the variables were applied to a number of cities to

A set of 29 urban sustainability indicators

Five sustainability categories were established: Access and Mobility (AMC), Environment and Sanitation (ESC), Governance (GC), Health (HC) and Social Equity (SEC). These categories emerged from the practical needs of the pilot team to manage the indicators when we got to the stage of calculating the indicator values for all six cities. They were formed by grouping the indicators by either assigning them to an existing category or by establishing a new one. While this grouping was applied for

Lessons from an expert-led process

The process of finding a set of indicators for Chilean cities involved a group of experts. Expert-led processes have defined the formulation of sustainability indicators since the early 1990s: ‘top-down’ and quantitative rather than ‘bottom-up’ and qualitative (see Bell & Morse, 2008); however, there are experiences of promoting discussion among other stakeholders, while community-level indicators should be encouraged so that they are relevant to the inhabitants and their immediate conditions.

Conclusions

Despite a growing interest in measuring and assessing urban sustainability, many countries still lack a relevant indicator set. The complexity and duration of the CEDEUS process reveals why this may have hindered similar exercises elsewhere. For example, to prioritise among the indicators of an initial set of 574 indicators, and to develop the measurement variables for each indicator, we needed to employ different techniques and methods. Another risk is the stigmatisation of cities once they

Policy recommendations

The final points in this paper relate to the lessons learnt from the development of the methodology for the CEDEUS Indicator Set, and their relevance for understanding the value and limitations of indicators in urban policy and practice. Given the importance of indicators in international development objectives, through the SDGs, and in light of the need to monitor progress against the objectives for urban development outlined in the New Urban Agenda, and the National Urban Development Policy

Access to indicator details and data

The CEDEUS Indicators and further details of the methodology are available in Spanish at: http://indicadores.cedeus.cl. Elaborated indicator calculation scripts in the R language are hosted at the centers GitHub account (https://github.com/CEDEUS/city-indicators-calculation-scripts), and most of the data is made available via CEDEUS' research data infrastructure (http://datos.cedeus.cl).

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate funding for CEDEUS (Conicyt/Fondap/15110020). The team is thankful to Felipe Gutiérrez, Athena Carkovic, Margarita Duco, Ivonne Rueda, Sebastian Diaz, David Aviles, Alejandra Rasse, Hector Jorquera, Renato D'Alencon, Cristian Henriquez, Ricardo Truffello and Waldo Bustamante, among many others, for their participation and collaboration in this multi-year project.

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