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1
A review of urban design sustainability evaluation
tools
Jorge Gil1 and José Pinto Duarte2
1 TU Delft, 2 TU Lisbon
J
ulianalaan 134
2628 BL Delft
N
etherlands
j
.a.lopesgil@tudelft.nl
Key words: Sustainable urban development, urban design, evaluation tool, indicators,
urban form
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to identify and compare sustainable urban
development (SUD) evaluation tools suitable to use at the urban
neighbourhood scale during the design phase of the development process.
Twelve tools are selected and analysed in terms of structure, format and
content, the latter focusing on how the evaluation indicators address the
dimensions of urban form, accessibility and the neighbourhood’s spatial
context. From this analysis it is possible to identify some general trends.
However, the selected tools represent a very diverse set with no common
standards, varying in the background principles, the topics addressed and the
outputs produced. Furthermore, the tools are largely specific to a specific
geographic and institutional context and to a type of project, and for that
reason the customisation of indicators and benchmarks is generally
encouraged. As a consequence urban design teams have to decide between
using whatever tool is already available for the project’s specific context or
customising the tool that presents the most relevant format and set of
principles.
2 DDSS 2010
1. INTRUDUCTION
To address the challenges of urban sustainability many evaluation
frameworks have been developed within research, industry and policy
environments to support decision-making during the sustainable urban
development (SUD) process, from context analysis to monitoring of the
outcomes. This paper identifies SUD evaluation tools suitable for urban
designers to use at the neighbourhood scale during the design phase of the
urban development process and compares them in terms of structure and
content.
This paper represents work in progress towards the selection of a SUD
evaluation framework, or at least the identification of the requirements for
such a framework, to be integrated in the ‘City Induction’ research project,
which aims to develop an urban design system using an urban ontology that
can be applied to the formulation, generation and evaluation of urban plans.
The first part of this paper describes the SUD evaluation tools’
identification and selection process, indicating the sources, selection criteria
and the final list of 12 tools reviewed. The second part of the paper presents
the general analysis of this set of tools in terms of their structure, format and
content. The analysis of the content focuses on how the indicators address
the dimensions of urban form, accessibility and the neighbourhood’s spatial
context. The paper concludes with a discussion of possibilities for selecting,
customising or developing a SUD evaluation tool.
2. TOOL IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION
Over recent years several research projects have compiled the state of the
art in SUD evaluation tools either reviewing them (Cremasco 2007, Jensen
et al. 2007, Levett-Therivel 2004, McCreadie et al. 2004) or creating SUD
evaluation frameworks (Curwell et al. 2007, Bordeau 2004) that integrate
them. Other sources used to feed an initial pool of SUD evaluation tools
were references in professional and institutional planning resources and
research projects such as CRISP (http://crisp.cstb.fr/database.asp: Accessed
May 2010), PETUS (http://www.petus.eu.com/: Accessed May 2010) and
BEQUEST (http://research.scpm.salford.ac.uk/bqtoolkit/index2.htm:
Accessed May 2010), which have produced Internet databases of SUD
evaluation tools. These sources cover all phases of the SUD process and the
whole spectrum of sustainability issues.
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review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 3
The first stage of this work consisted in identifying SUD evaluation tools
that address the scale of the neighbourhood and have a holistic approach to
sustainability. This reduces the number of available tools as a significant
number is targeted at the building and building component scales, or focus
on specific issues like energy or transport.
Nevertheless, a list of 63 tools was identified and is testament that this
field of research and development has been very active in the past ten years.
There was an interest in having a broad geographic coverage to try to capture
different approaches and see how far certain principles are culture specific,
but the tools identified were only from Europe and North America.
From the initial list of tools identified, a third was excluded outright
because no further information could be found beyond a database entry or a
reference, with many websites now extinct. In addition excluded were also:
(1) one off research projects applied only to the original case study, tools
developed successfully for a specific site, e.g. Hammarby Sjöstad, but
without the necessary generalisation for simple application elsewhere, (2)
tools that evolved into more recent versions, e.g. SATURN into PROPOLIS
and now SOLUTIONS, and (3) tools that were targeted exclusively at the
final stage of the design phase for project certification when no further
design iterations are expected, e.g. BREEAM Communities.
2.1 Tools selection
Further selection was carried out on the resulting set of 20 tools based on
evidence of recent activity (after 2005), either in its development or in its
application to case studies or real projects.
This resulted in a short list of 12 tools (Table 1): CityCAD (Holistic City
Software, 2010), Duurzaamheids Profiel van een Locatie (DPL) (IVAM,
2008; Kortman et al., 2006); ECOCITY (Gaffron et al., 2008); INDEX
(Criterion Planners, 2008); LEED Neighbourhood Development (LEED-
ND) (USGBC, 2009); Plan Especial de Indicadores de Sostenibilidad
Ambiental de la Actividad Urbanística de Sevilla (PEISAAUS) (Agencia de
Ecologia Urbana de Barcelona, 2006); SEEDA Sustainability Checklist
(SESC) (SEEDA, WWF & BRE); Shaping Neighbourhoods (SN) (Barton et
al., 2003); SOLUTIONS (Barton et al., 2009; Mitchell et al., 2005); SPeAR
(Braithwaite, 2006; McGregor and Roberts, 2003); Sustainable Urban
Landscapes: The Site Design Manual for B.C. Communities (SUL) (Condon,
2003); Urbanizing Suburbia (US) (Frey & Bagaeen, 2009).
Finally, there is a count of the number of different type of organisations
involved in the creation of the tool, i.e. governmental bodies (G), academic
institutions (A), members of the industry (I) and non-governmental
organisations (N). This gives an indication of the tool’s background and
4 DDSS 2010
target audience, but is also a reflexion of the general interest in this field,
with both academia and industry involved in 50% of the tools each.
Table 1 – List of the selected SUD evaluation tools.
Name Code Date Country G A I N
CityCAD CityCAD 2008 UK 0 0 1 0
Duurzaamheids Profiel van een
Locatie DPL 2009 NL 0 0 2 0
ECOCITY ECOCITY 2005 AT, DE, NL 1 2 0 0
INDEX INDEX 2008 US 0 0 1 0
LEED Neighbourhood
Development LEED-ND 2009 US 2 0 1 0
Plan Especial de Indicadores de
Sostenibilidad Ambiental de la
Actividad Urbanística de
Sevilla
PEISAAUS 2006 ES 2 2 0 0
SEEDA Sustainability
Checklist SESC 2003 UK 1 0 1 1
Shaping Neighbourhoods SN 2003 UK 0 1 0 0
SOLUTIONS SOLUTIONS 2009 UK 0 6 0 0
SPeAR SPeAR 2001 UK 0 0 1 0
Sustainable Urban Landscapes SUL 2003 CA 0 1 0 0
Urbanizing Suburbia US 2006 UK 0 1 0 0
3. TOOL STRUCTURE AND FORMAT
The many tools available all seem to serve the same purpose, but it is
also clear that they all have different formats, as there is no agreed standard
evaluation method. Firstly I review the structure and format of the tools to
understand their potential, limitations and application context, then I
describe their format in terms type of tool, input methods and outputs
provided.
3.1 General SUD evaluation tool structure
The selected SUD evaluation tools are all based on the use of
“indicators” grouped into categories to assess the sustainability of urban
designs. However the terms used to describe each level of the tools vary
greatly and even the use of the term “indicator” is not consistent and is only
explicitly defined in few cases. For this reason and for comparison purposes,
there was the need to define a general evaluation tool structure, based on the
A
review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 5
common elements of the selected tools and of the on-line tool databases, that
is able to accommodate their variety and describe them consistently.
The general evaluation tool structure consists of five levels with
increasing detail and specificity, namely:
1. Sustainability dimensions – the core goals of sustainability, often
based on the three dimensions of environmental preservation, social
equity and economic vitality;
2. Urban sustainability issues – the topics of concern to sustainable
urban development, that need to be addressed to achieve the core
goals, e.g. improve access to socio-economic opportunities;
3. Evaluation criteria – a set of aspects that need to be assessed in
order to verify the response of the plan to the issue, e.g. access to
public transport, access to jobs and access to local services;
4. Design indicators – a variable whose value is indicative of the
performance of the design, with a unit and often a specific
measurement method, e.g. percent of residents within 300m walking
distance of a public transit stop, average distance to the nearest
doctor;
5. Benchmarks – reference values that the indicators need to meet to
correspond to quality levels, often in different range groups.
Figure 1 presents the proposed structure in a typical triangular shape, as
there are usually more elements in the more detailed levels such as ‘design
indicators’. This diagram highlights the critical transitions between levels
where decisions have to be made in order to translate from general concepts
to more specific concepts, and from theoretical concepts to empirical
measures. It is these transitions that make tools diverge from each other
because they have different objectives, baseline data and assessment
methods. The ‘Benchmarks’ level is the only one that doesn’t imply a
conceptual transition, mapping directly onto the ‘Indicators’, however this
level is optional and highly flexible because the values are context dependent
and don’t apply to different geographic locations or project types. These
values should be set by teams of experts and public participation processes
where local interests and knowledge is also brought into the equation.
6 DDSS 2010
Figure 1 – General structure proposed for SUD evaluation tools
A balanced tool would in principle cover all levels explicitly and take an
informed approach to level transitions, based on sound theory and empirical
research.
3.2 Structure of the selected tools
Each of the reviewed tools was conformed to the same structure, by
matching the tool’s levels to the ones in the proposed structure irrespective
of what they are called and rather what characteristics they have. Figure 2
presents the structural configuration of each of the selected evaluation tools
based on the number of elements at each level.
Figure 2 – Diagram of the structure of the selected SUD evaluation tools,
representing the number of elements at each level.
Contrary to what one might expect from a set of tools that have a similar
design support objective, most tools don’t fall neatly into the general
structure. They do not cover the full range of levels, have gaps or the levels
A
review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 7
are not clearly separated. In some cases (SESC, SN, SUL, US) the ‘design
indicators’ level had to be extracted from the information available in
benchmark values (white chart bars in Figure 2).
3.2.1 Tool configurations
The analysis of the individual structural configuration reveals to what
extent the tools address sustainable development issues (‘dimensions’ and
‘issues’ levels) and design detail (‘criteria’ to ‘benchmarks’ levels).
At the top level, of sustainable development dimensions, one would
expect that all tools explicitly start from the standard set of three dimensions:
environmental, social and economic sustainability. However only three tools
have their roots there while another three don’t mention this level at all. As
for the other tools, three expand the original set with a fourth dimension,
separating the environmental dimension into ‘environment’ and ‘resources’
(SPeAR and SOLUTIONS) or adding a ‘transport’ dimension (SUL), and
the remaining three tools start from a unique set of dimensions that is already
adapted to the urban development context, as one expects to find at the
‘Issues’ level.
ECOCITY and SPeAR provide a very grounded high-level structure but
don’t go as far as to specify benchmarks or even design indicators (SPeAR).
On the other hand CityCAD and INDEX consist of collections of design
indicators only, without explicit sustainable development principles beyond
the grouping of indicators under SUD topics.
The remaining tools present a complete structure down to the level of
design detail in the form of benchmark values or design patterns (SUL),
varying in the way they incorporate sustainable development dimensions as
described before.
3.2.2 Synergies and overlaps
One aspect that is not captured by this structural description is how the
different tools handle criteria overlaps and indicator synergies. This is a
difficulty with sustainability evaluation because the three dimensions of
sustainability are interrelated and as such the elements of the levels below
can have cross effects or be present in different categories, e.g. access to
green spaces has an health impact on the population (social dimension), an
impact on biodiversity (environmental dimension) and an impact on property
values (economic dimension).
The links are not linear or obvious and some tools just leave this aspect
out to keep their usage simpler. Those tools that use aggregate ratings need
8 DDSS 2010
to be particularly careful in handling this issue to avoid double counting and
one can find different approaches in the set of selected tools.
One approach is to adapt the sustainability dimensions and issues levels,
i.e. SPeAR duplicates the ‘Transport’ issue under the environment and
economy dimensions, with specific criteria for each ocurrence. SN is explicit
about such relations in tables that map sustainability dimensions to design
criteria and SUL makes extensive cross-references between related
assessment criteria and indicates the link to sustainability dimensions. DPL
and LEED-ND build these constraints and dependencies into their evaluation
models, where certain indicators depend on the results of others.
Finally, the use of weights, either hardcoded in the model (LEED-ND,
SESC, SOLUTIONS) or customisable for each project (DPL, INDEX), is an
approach that can compensate for some of the effects of double counting,
affecting the weight of individual criteria and indicators in the final rating.
3.3 Format of the selected tools
Table 2 summarises the tools’ format in terms of type, software platform
(auxiliary tools in brackets), evaluation features and output characteristics.
Table 2 – Summary of the selected evaluation tools’ format
Type Softw
are Free Weights Ben
chm
arks
Rating
Agg. Output
CityCAD Indicators CAD No - - - Map,
Chart,
Table,
Report
DPL Profiling Excel,
(other) No Custom Yes Issue Chart
ECOCITY Guide - - - - - Chart
INDEX Indicators GIS No Custom - - Table,
Map
LEED-ND Rating Excel,
(GIS) No Fixed Yes Full,
Issue Label
PEISAAUS Guide (GIS,
other) - - Yes - -
SESC Checklist Web Yes Fixed Yes Criteria,
Issue Table
SN Guide - - - Yes - -
SOLUTIONS Framework (GIS,
other) - Fixed - Criteria Chart,
Table
SPeAR Profiling Other No - - Criteria,
Issue Chart
SUL Guide - - - Yes - -
US Indicators (GIS) - - Yes - -
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review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 9
The sustainable urban design guides ECOCITY, SN and SUL are
documents without software implementation and don’t mention specific
auxiliary software, otherwise most tools depend to some extent on the use of
CAD and GIS software platforms. PEISAAUS and SOLUTIONS use GIS
for advanced calculations of the design indicator values, but only CityCAD
and INDEX are natively based on such platforms, and make use of these
interfaces to directly extract values from the design options. For data entry,
calculation and visualisation of the results the preference goes for Excel,
with SPeAR having a similar proprietary platform, and SESC using web
based forms. These solutions require the separate task of collating the
information for input, which needs to be repeated each time changes are
made to the design leading to a less dynamic process. SESC is the only free
tool but the results are only relevant to the South East of England region for
which the indicators and benchmarks were specifically calibrated.
In relation to aggregated ratings, LEED-ND is the only tool reviewed that
provides a full rating of the urban design, and INDEX offers a single score to
compare different design options. The other tools that aggregate the
indicators have explicitly chosen to leave it at ‘issues’ or ‘criteria’ level,
offering a profiling of the neighbourhood.
The most frequent standard output provided by the tools are charts, e.g.
bar charts (DPL, CityCAD, INDEX), radar charts (ECOCITY) or multi-level
pie charts (SPeAR, SOLUTIONS) to provide the area’s profile. This is the
preferred method because it allows visual assessment and comparison of the
strong and weak aspects of the plans, pointing the way for further design
work. The tools that are based on CAD/GIS also provide standard thematic
maps for individual indicators (CityCAD, INDEX, PEISAAUS and
SOLUTIONS), which add an important spatial dimension to the assessment
of each individual indicator, although it doesn’t provide an overview of the
plan’s performance. The only rating system (LEED-ND) provides as
standard output a label with a score and a grade, and the individual indicator
and criteria scores are only available in a detailed checklist.
4. URBAN DESIGN THEMES
In this section I review the content of the selected SUD evaluation tools
in relation to urban design themes of concern to strategic urban design at the
early stages of the design process, by trying to answer specific questions:
1. To what extent is the tool measuring directly the design through
dimensions of urban form (Dempsey et al., 2008)?
2. What is the importance given to the concept of accessibility?
3. Does it consider the site’s local context and the city region?
10 DDSS 2010
The data for this analysis results from a detailed review of every element
at the ‘indicators’ level, then translating this qualitative information into a
set of dummy variables. These dummy variables indicate if an indicator
involves one or more of the dimensions of urban form as defined by
Dempsey et al. (2008), i.e. land use, density, mobility infrastructure, layout
and building type, and if it covers exclusively issues of the building or the
public space, uses the concept of accessibility and addresses the site context
at the local and city-region scales.
Descriptive statistical analysis of the dummy variables enables the
identification of general trends and specificities of the various tools.
4.1 Measuring urban design
The first question mentioned in the previous section is analysed in two
parts, by looking at the content of those indicators that do not measure
directly urban form and at the dimensions of urban form covered by those
that do.
4.1.1 Indicators external to design
For the first part of the question I look at different reasons why the
indicator is not measuring the design directly:
1. It obtains the indicator value using a simulation model or complex
calculation with behavioural assumptions about the design’s
performance. These indicators would otherwise be obtained by
surveying the existing situation, e.g. levels of CO2 emissions,
vehicle miles travelled.
2. It is confined to building design, materials, energy use or
technology, e.g. area of green roofs, comfort of bus shelter design,
re-use of building materials, building’s energy rating.
3. It is based on an external measure beyond the control of urban
design: policy measure, e.g. parking restrictions; market conditions,
e.g. affordability of the housing stock; and lifestyle, e.g. level of
home working.
4. The data is collected prior the design for baseline assessment or after
the design for monitoring purposes, e.g. crime rates, mix of housing
tenure, population profile.
5. It is about the design process itself rather than the design outcome,
e.g. mechanisms of public participation, completion of an
environmental assessment.
It is not surprising that all tools have a large percentage of such
indicators, between 30% and 70% of all indicators, depending on the tool.
A
review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 11
This highlights the limitations of trying to assess the sustainability of an
urban design by just looking at the variables available directly from the
design, unless one is comparing design options where all these external
aspects are equal. However, each tool chooses to focus on different aspects
external to the design (Table 3).
Table 3. Percentage of indicators not addressing directly the design
1.
Simulation 2. Building
design 3. External
forces 4. Different
stage 5. Design
process
CityCAD 3% 28% 9% 0% 0%
DPL 8% 8% 8% 31% 0%
ECOCITY 2% 30% 11% 2% 12%
INDEX 35% 19% 7% 4% 0%
LEED-ND 0% 30% 12% 4% 9%
PEISAAUS 0% 38% 4% 0% 3%
SESC 0% 36% 10% 4% 18%
SN 0% 9% 28% 0% 14%
SOLUTIONS 40% 0% 9% 0% 0%
SPeAR 2% 29% 19% 5% 6%
SUL 0% 28% 0% 2% 1%
US 0% 0% 11% 32% 0%
By far the most common top aspect is that of addressing the building
scale, in those cases accounting for 28% to 38% of the indicators. The
research in the building energy field is more established and several tools
(LEED-ND, PEISAAUS, SESC or SPeAR) evolve from or incorporate
building evaluation frameworks. From the other tools, INDEX and
SOLUTIONS rely on transport models to calculate more than 35% of their
indicators, DPL and US base their assessment on population data relative to
its profile, employment and income levels, SN has a strong focus on
community and on healthy life styles, and SESC has the most significant
share of indicators related to the design process itself, which common to
tools that involve government institutions or are strongly based on local
policy.
4.1.2 Urban form dimensions
From the indicators that directly measure the urban design one can
analyse which dimensions of urban form are of greater concern to the tool’s
authors (Table 4).
Table 4. Percentage of indicators addressing specific urban form dimensions
Building
Type Layout Land
use Density Transport
Infr. Multiple
dimensions
CityCAD 13% 18% 60% 28% 28% 43%
12 DDSS 2010
DPL 25% 33% 58% 8% 25% 50%
ECOCITY 8% 28% 56% 4% 20% 16%
INDEX 17% 41% 54% 26% 22% 44%
LEED-ND 13% 46% 58% 12% 25% 56%
PEISAAUS 2% 24% 57% 19% 26% 38%
SESC 18% 55% 43% 0% 32% 48%
SN 5% 76% 57% 5% 43% 67%
SOLUTIONS 11% 61% 67% 6% 22% 61%
SPeAR 10% 22% 22% 0% 27% 8%
SUL 16% 50% 38% 9% 31% 33%
US 6% 19% 44% 44% 31% 38%
Land use is in general the most pervasive dimension being mentioned in
40% to 60% of the indicators of the various tools. Where land use doesn’t
dominate (SESC, SN, SPeAR, SUL) then the street layout is an important
factor, either through its qualities, e.g. continuity of pedestrian network, or
by determining access to land use, e.g. walking distance to schools. Density,
a central concept in the debate of sustainable urban development, fails to be
measured in two of the tools, and in general is measured by less than 20% of
the indicators. The transport infrastructure (including the pedestrian and
cycle networks) is consistently represented in all tools by 20% to 40% of the
indicators.
An interesting aspect to note is that in most tools more than 40% of the
indicators involve multiple dimensions of urban form simultaneously, e.g.
non-residential density, safe pedestrian network to schools. This is an
important factor for urban design because change to any of the dimensions
involved will have an impact on the outcome of the indicator. This feature
starts addressing some of the synergies that are known to exist between
urban form dimensions and sustainability (Dempsey et al., 2008).
4.2 Accessibility and Context
Finally one can look at two themes that are of relevance to strategic
urban design, those of accessibility and the local and regional context, and
the percentage of design indicators that address those themes (Table 5).
Table 5. Percentage of design indicators addressing accessibility and context
Accessibility Local Context Regional Context
CityCAD 28% 0% 0%
DPL 25% 8% 8%
ECOCITY 36% 0% 0%
INDEX 28% 2% 0%
LEED-ND 25% 13% 2%
PEISAAUS 17% 5% 5%
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review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 13
SESC 61% 30% 5%
SN 86% 62% 29%
SOLUTIONS 50% 33% 0%
SPeAR 35% 57% 2%
SUL 27% 13% 7%
US 31% 38% 19%
All tools have indicators on the topic of accessibility with a
representation between 25% and 36%, with SESC, SN and SOLUTIONS
going above 50%, and PEISAAUS being the tool that is least concerned with
accessibility issues with only 17% of indicators. This points to the
importance of the topic in addressing various dimensions of sustainable
urban development, but also to the fact that there is a multitude of
parameters to consider involving accessibility increasing their numbers:
different transport modes, different land uses and different distance ranges.
As for the neighbourhood context the coverage by different tools is quite
disparate (Table 5). The local context is considered to different degrees,
from not at all (CityCAD and ECOCITY) to more than 50% of indicators
(SN and SPeAR). The local context is to some extent dependent on
accessibility and the importance given to land use in areas beyond the
neighbourhood, but it also has to do with the way the neighbourhood
connects to the surroundings in terms of street layout and transport networks,
with the impact the design has on local resources or with the impact local
conditions in terms of crime, pollution, population profile or architectural
style might have on the site.
The regional context is ignored by a third of the tools and has very little
representation on the rest, the most frequent indicator being the site’s
location in the city-region. Only SN with 29% and US with 19% have a
significant number of indicators that consider a regional scale, dealing with
access to regional amenities and services such as large green spaces,
museums and universities. In general the transit infrastructure is considered
only in terms of presence of transit stops and not the network and the links to
the region. This shows that the general perception is that there are few direct
impacts between the neighbourhood and the city region that involve
dimensions of urban form and the detail of urban design.
5. DISCUSSION
This review provides a general overview of trends within a selection of
SUD evaluation tools suitable for use during the design phase of a
neighbourhood scale urban design project. However, more detail is required
to make an informed tool selection for use in a specific project, or to develop
14 DDSS 2010
a custom framework that is best suited to the specific context. This last
possibility is actually very common amongst SUD evaluation practice and is
suggested by some of the reviewed tools, with recommendations on how to
adapt them with custom indicators, weights or benchmarks. The DPL tool
for example, is specific to the Dutch context but has been adapted for use in
Copenhagen (Jensen, 2009).
Two further studies that can be carried out are the creation of an SUD
assessment criteria matrix and a review and discussion of urban form
indicator calculation methods.
The assessment criteria matrix would provide a list of the urban form
assessment criteria from the selection of SUD evaluation tools, and map
these criteria to each tool, providing simultaneously a detailed comparison of
the tools and a frequency of use of each criterion. This method would allow
seeking a consensus of the most relevant criteria and the identification of
universal themes. It would also highlight cultural or contextual specificities
of certain tools. An open question is if the resulting set of most frequent
criteria would provide a sensible and holistic sustainability evaluation
framework.
The detailed review of urban form indicators is important because there
is a degree of freedom in choosing the types of indicators to fulfil each
assessment criterion: they are more easily replaceable without affecting the
overall sustainability concept of the tool. Criteria can have single or multiple
indicators, combine indicators into indices, and indicators can use different
calculation methods, data sources and statistical aggregation approaches. Of
particular relevance for urban design support is the use of indicators with a
spatial statistics component that establish a more direct link to the
dimensions of urban form.
6. CONCLUSION
This paper provides an overview of current SUD evaluation tools that can
be applied to neighbourhood scale during the design phase of urban
development projects. This is a very active research and development field
with many tools produced over the past ten years, but only a limited number
is still active and applicable to the specific purpose.
The reviewed tools represent a very diverse set with no standard
structure, format or content, varying in terms of background principles and
the level of detail reached. They incorporate different sets and types of
indicators where 30% to 70% are not directly related to the measurement of
urban form dimensions. From the indicators directly linked to urban form,
the dominating dimensions are land use followed by layout. Density is
A
review of urban design sustainability evaluation tools 15
represented in most tools by a small number of indicators, while the
transport infrastructure is prevalent in all tools. The tendency is to have
indicators that deal with multiple urban form dimensions simultaneously,
reflecting their synergies. As for themes of importance for strategic urban
design, accessibility is addressed by a third of the urban form indicators; the
local neighbourhood context is considered only by some tools and to varying
degrees; and links to the city-region are mostly ignored with the exception of
two tools, revealing a preference for addressing the local problems first, and
the perception that impacts between the two scales are limited.
The diversity of SUD evaluation tools leaves urban design teams with a
difficult choice because the tools can include design principles that are not
universally accepted, may require data that is not available, don’t offer the
desired output or they might not be adapted to the specific context and
design problem. The decision can come down to geographical relevance of
the tool irrespective of its content and format, as most tools have been
developed for a specific geographic context and some have institutional
support of national and local government bodies. Alternatively the decision
can be based on the tool that offers the most convenient input/output and
best supports the approach taken for the project.
However, some tools can be adapted to the local context and specific
problem, by choosing sets of indicators, calculation methods and setting
weights and benchmarks. Urban design teams might choose this route and
develop bespoke evaluation frameworks, but to support these initiatives it
might be useful to reach a general agreement on the higher-level issues and
criteria of sustainable urban development, as well as a general understanding
of design indicators that address spatial and urban form dimensions
effectively instead of simple area statistics.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Jorge Gil is funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT),
Portugal, with grant SFRH/BD/46709/2008. The work is associated with the
“City Induction” research project hosted at the TU Lisbon, supported by
FCT (PTDC/AUR/64384/2006).
This research is being conducted at the TU Delft, Department of
Urbanism, under the supervision of Prof. Vincent Nadin and Prof. Stephen
Read, whom I thank for their continued support and inspiration.
16 DDSS 2010
8. REFERENCES
Agencia de Ecologia Urbana de Barcelona, 2006. Plan Especial de Indicadores de
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