A quantitative method for the evaluation of policies to enhance urban sustainability

There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase.

▸ We present a method to evaluate likely effects of urban sustainability policies. ▸ Quantification is enabled by an extensive database and growing technical literature. ▸ Examples of results of urban sustainability policies quantified through the method are presented. ▸ Cumulative impacts and possible rebound effects are discussed.