Is there intercontinental difference in the indicators of urban sustainability? The case of sustainable cities index

Abstract

As a large percentage of the world's population lives in urban settlements, the issue of city sustainability starts to draw the attention of government representatives worldwide. One of the means by which sustainability is measured and discussed is using composite indexes. Up to lately, the focus of experts was towards ranking countries by their level of achieved sustainability. However, the new direction of studies is towards ranking on the micro-level; on the level of cities. One of such composite indexes which stands out for its coverage, precise definition, sound methodology, and regular publication is the Sustainable Cities Index devised by Arcadis, a management consulting company. In this paper, we employed the Factor analysis and the one-way ANOVA to explore whether there is difference in the sustainability of European, North American, Asian, and Australian cities. We aimed to explore the differences between them and the patterns of differences for indicators of the People, Planet, and Profit pillars. The obtained results can provide additional information for policy-makers on the complex issue of city sustainability with regard to the regional differences. We believe our approach can act as a foundation for further academic research on composite indexes, urban sustainability, and challenges of the modern world.