- Urban sustainability index is a measurement of how a city efficiently use their resources to meet the needs of their citizens and at the same time preserve much of the natural environment to reduce pollution. The index has 5 categories to judge a city’s urban sustainability.
- Meeting the basic needs for their citizens such as water, food and shelter.
- Allocation of their resources in water, how waste recycling is processed, and the GDP of their city.
- Environmental standards to reduce air and water pollution.
- How buildings and mass transportation is built around each other.
- Continuing on future sustainability.
I believe this is possible to implement into society if pollution and global warming was taken seriously. Large corporations aren’t doing enough to deal with the damage done by industrialization. Also the government need to reallocate their resources to manage the pollution rather than funding militaristic purposes.
The indicator system is based on achieving a compact city, to ensure diversity, to minimize impacts on the cycles of matter and energy and creating conducive environments that allow social cohesion of its inhabitants. different areas are established; morphology, public space and mobility, urban complexity, metabolism, biodiversity, social cohesion and sustainability guide function. The usefulness of this model is that it adapts to the steps of a decision-making model and any which, moreover, is common to the thinking of decision-makers.
a) Including direct and indirect pressures. Direct are, for example, the
fires. Indirect be, for example, pressures on biodiversity arising from
road construction.
b) State of the environment, descriptive of the quality of the environment, incorporating quality
of natural resources (flora, fauna, soil, air and water) and the quality of these resources
processes associated with socio-economic exploitation.
c) In response, indicators of efforts in terms of environmental policy and resource
natural.
Q1:
The urban sustainability index measures the development of a city through five major components.
1: how well the government meets the basic needs of its citizens(like providing water and shelter)
2:how well they manage to use their resources (electric/water consumption)
3: environmental cleanliness ( air pollution, water waste management)
4: built environment: the use of mass transit, urban density
5: the commitment to future sustainability (initiatives taken by officials in order to improve the sustainability of a city
Q2: after analyzing a couple of China’s best cities, they found that green urban planning, transparent standards (makes it easy for cities to have clear goals if city officials enforce it correctly) , and integrated large scale recycling are all important factors towards having a sustainable city. These components are all achievable and should work, these Chinese cities are example of this. If more cities make the effort of incorporating these components and follow the guidelines of the index (meeting basic needs, efficiently managing resources, incorporate green energy etc), then those cities will have higher chances of successful social and urban development.