Sustainable urban development observatory of Thessaloniki - lessons learnt from the first year of operation

Sustainable Urban Development Observatory of Thessaloniki (SUDOTh) started operating in the first semester of 2020 with the objective to promote territorial evidence in policy making in urban governance. SUDOTh was developed as part of the Sustainable Urban Development Strategy 2016-2023 of Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area to address the need to obtain, observe and monitor how complex urban functions interact, at a territorial level, with product development (or lagging) effects. In the first year of operation, the Observatory had to set, test and evaluate the system of indicators and indexes it uses. Initially the system was formed in 4 basic sections: 1. Territorial Development and Urban renewal, 2. Urban Mobility, 3. Environmental Conditions and 4. Social Conditions. An extra set of indicators for Urban Governance was also developed. The process of data collection, test and evaluation of indicators was eventually coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation influenced deeply several urban functions as well as the data collection methodology. The first results and conclusions from the first year of the operation of SUDOTh are presented and discussed further in this paper.