Urban sustainability assessment of neighborhoods in Lombardy

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents a contextualized system useful in the decision-making of Public Administrators for analysis and actions concerning urban sustainability and for monitoring neighborhood transformation processes. The system is developed with an approach made up by Inputs (available data from standards and laws and state-of-the-art), Controls (i.e. technical skills of Public Administrators) and Mechanisms (know-how and software used) which implement Outputs, the main elements of the system: Sustainability indicators, Benchmarks and Scores. The set of indicators chosen allows to consider many aspects of environmental sustainability as Resource Consumption (Energy, Materials, Water, Soil) and Environmental Impacts (Pollutant Emissions, Wastes and Vulnerability). The objective parameters of the indicators are based on a benchmarking activity in relation to the Lombardy context and in order to provide reachable target performance. Finally, a baseline of weighted scores of indicators is proposed to allow to reach a final overall score of sustainability of the neighborhood.