Evaluating Urban Quality: Indicators and Assessment Tools for Smart Sustainable Cities

Abstract

Abstract:The analysis of urban sustainability is key to urban planning, and its usefulness extends to smart cities. Analyses of urban quality typically focus on applying methodologies that evaluate quality objectives at environmental, urban, and building levels. Research has shown that a system of indicators can be useful for developing qualitative and quantitative descriptors of urban environments. The first step in this study was to formulate a methodology to measure the quality of urban life based on investigative checklists and objective and subjective indicators, aggregated to develop an index to evaluate a city's level of smart urban quality. The second step was to apply this methodology to evaluate the city of Cagliari (Italy) at the neighbourhood scale, which is considered by literature the most suitable as a self-sufficient spatial unit for showing redevelopment results. In addition to sharing its research findings, this study aims to verify whether the methodology can be applied to similar urban contexts. The main outcomes of this research pertain to opportunities to numerically measure both objective and subjective aspects that affect urban quality. In this way, the most critical areas to be requalified have been highlighted in order to prepare policies congruent with the local context.

Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Role of Public Perception in Infrastructure and the Social Factors for Sustainable Development

“…The elevated livability is a key factor in planning sustainable cities [30]. It is also important to recognize the role that can be played by a satisfactory level of infrastructure in promoting environmentally friendly behavior.…”

“…The empirical evidence highlights the importance of place attachment in environmental responsible behavior. Nevertheless, sustainable city planning aims at improving quality of life in which public perception on environmental and social factors such as neighborhood, infrastructure, safety and inequality receive important status [30]. In the existing literature, techniques such as mediation analysis [3,19] and logit regression [10] have been used to establish causality between personal perceptions and characteristics and pro-environmental behaviors.…”

A Methodological Framework for Assessing Practicability of the Urban Space: The Survey on Conditions of Practicable Environments (SCOPE) Procedure Applied in the Case Study of Cagliari (Italy)

“…Concerns about walkability relate to a recognition of walking as a fundamental factor for promoting more sustainable, active, and inclusive communities [18,19]. The concept of practicability diverges from the notion of walkability because it emphasizes the importance of exploration and appropriation of public spaces through play as a condition for the development of children's cognitive, imaginative, and creative potential, and for the construction of their social and individual identities [8][9][10][11].The concepts of walkability and practicability thus emphasize the concepts of autonomy [6,9], capability [20][21][22], and affordance [23] as structural categories for the development of the urban public space [6][7][8][9][10][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Moreover, as a condition for their wellbeing, active citizenship, and integral development, the promotion of children's autonomy constitutes a relevant challenge for implementing the smart city paradigm [24].…”

“…Moreover, as a condition for their wellbeing, active citizenship, and integral development, the promotion of children's autonomy constitutes a relevant challenge for implementing the smart city paradigm [24]. In fact, this paradigm can be regarded as the prototype of a city that mobilises and uses its resources to improve its inhabitants' quality of life, while also promoting an anthropocentric approach and designing sustainable solutions to mitigate social and economic fragilities [22].The smart city paradigm requires a methodological framework that evaluates the performance of the urban fabric via comprehensive analytic protocols. This study is thus aimed at elaborating an audit tool, the Survey on Conditions of Practicable Environments (SCOPE), for evaluating the quality of urban spaces in terms of their practicability for children.…”

“…Thus, constructing practicable public urban spaces that are organized to accommodate youngsters' independent leisure activities represents a relevant action to promote children's rights, their development as creative, autonomous, enterprising individuals, and to increase their quality of life.The concept of practicability is here introduced as the potential of the public urban space to promote children's independence by accommodating their spontaneous social activities [6][7][8][9][10][11]. In fact, the notion of practicability integrates and modifies the notion of walkability [17,[20][21][22] by limiting the composition of the groups of users considered, and by enlarging its scope, in terms of uses and activities focusing on: (a) the needs and practices of children; (b) the potential of spaces to accommodate and enable children's independent mobility and informal and structured, individual, and collective ludic and leisure activities [6,[8][9][10]23]. Further, practicability is proposed as a fundamental objective for planning the public urban space.…”