Measuring urban sustainability is an ongoing challenge for cities. A range of indicator systems have been developed over the past two decades, to measure everything from carbon emissions and ecological footprint  to economic activity and political engagement. Many of these are useful tools for city organisations to monitor and assess sustainability. However the many competing systems make selection of specific indicators a difficult task.

We have begun a review of different indicator systems, with the aim of helping cities navigate and choose the indicators that best reflect their particular concerns and interests. The review is designed to capture as many systems as possible. Our eventual goal is to publish our review as an online database of these systems, together with sample indicators and cities that report against one or more of them.

An early sample of this work is available here. As our review develops, we will be making more of our tables available.

We are also very interested in cities providing feedback on our review. Please contact us if you would like to participate.