Indicators and evaluation tools for the assessment of urban sustainability

This paper attempts to provide an explanation of why reductionistic approaches are not adequate to tackle the urban sustainability issue in a consistent way. Concepts such as urban environmental carrying capacity and ecological footprint are discussed. Multicriteria evaluation is proposed as a general multidimensional framework for the assessment of urban sustainability. This paper deals with the following main topics: 1) definition of the concept of urban sustainability 2) discussion of relevant sustainability indicators 3) multicriteria evaluation as a framework for the assessment of urban sustainability 4) an illustrative example.