Digital Commons Network^™

Missing Goals Yet Tangible Indicators Within Sustainability Assessment Literature: The Need To Align Planning And Monitoring In Urban Sustainability, Matthew Cohen, Amelia Miles, John E. Quinn

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Sustainability assessment literature is often based on large indicator sets, frequently lacking organizational framing. Previous research calls for stronger theoretical groundings and for urban sustainability assessments specifically to be goal-oriented, meaning that assessments should articulate goals for sustainable cities and select the indicators most appropriate for tracking progress. Here we analyzed the content of 69 papers from sustainability assessment literature. We asked: What common sustainability goals guide indicator selection? What is the distribution of natural, proxy, and constructed indicators across the literature? And what is the distribution of indicators within and across capital types? We found that less than half …