IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i19p5402-d272083.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Framework for Measuring Urban Sustainability in an Emerging Region: The City of Duhok as a Case Study

Author

Listed:
  • Azad Hassan

    (School of Planning, Design, and Construction, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
    Department of Economics, College of Economics and Administration, Nawroz University, Duhok 42001, Kurdistan Region, Iraq)

  • Zeenat Kotval-K

    (School of Planning, Design, and Construction, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA)

Abstract

The City of Duhok in Iraq, as one of the Kurdistan Region’s (KR) main cities, is concerned about sustainability but lacks the measures to guide urban policies. This study bridges this gap and offers an example of the use of urban sustainability indicators in an emerging region that experiences rapid urbanization and growth. The substantial objective of this study was to develop a functional framework of indicators to assess and measure urban sustainability for the city after KR’s declaration of autonomy in 1991 until 2010. That is, we limited our investigation to examining previous research, which decisively contains the approach to “measuring urban sustainability”. The study followed a three-step approach to examine urban sustainability as an integration of a few other relevant studies. The study concluded with two facts: First, the lack of progress on urban sustainability in the first decades resulted from the destabilized era that left the city administratively fragmented. Second, the political and economic watershed led to steady progress towards urban sustainability post-2005. The study highlights nine urban sustainability indicators, from a total of 39 indicators, that played an important role in navigating the general trend of urban sustainability in the city and how they can be used to promote future sustainable practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Azad Hassan & Zeenat Kotval-K, 2019. "A Framework for Measuring Urban Sustainability in an Emerging Region: The City of Duhok as a Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-20, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:19:p:5402-:d:272083
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5402/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5402/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. D. Basiago, 1998. "Economic, social, and environmental sustainability in development theory and urban planning practice," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 145-161, June.
    2. Tom Waas & Jean Hugé & Thomas Block & Tarah Wright & Francisco Benitez-Capistros & Aviel Verbruggen, 2014. "Sustainability Assessment and Indicators: Tools in a Decision-Making Strategy for Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(9), pages 1-23, August.
    3. David Drakakis-Smith, 1996. "Third World Cities: Sustainable Urban Development II—Population, Labour and Poverty," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(4-5), pages 673-701, May.
    4. Agrawal, Arun & Gibson, Clark C., 1999. "Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 629-649, April.
    5. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    6. Tom Waas & Jean Huge & Thomas BLOCK & Tarah Wright & Francisco Javier Benitez Capistros & Aviel Verbruggen, 2014. "Sustainability assessment and indicators: Tools in a decision-making strategy for sustainable development," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/189410, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Nourry, Myriam, 2008. "Measuring sustainable development: Some empirical evidence for France from eight alternative indicators," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 441-456, October.
    8. Hodson, Mike & Marvin, Simon, 2010. "Can cities shape socio-technical transitions and how would we know if they were?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 477-485, May.
    9. Geoffrey Heal, 2012. "Reflections--Defining and Measuring Sustainability," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 6(1), pages 147-163.
    10. David Niemeijer & Rudolf Groot, 2008. "Framing environmental indicators: moving from causal chains to causal networks," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 89-106, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mingshun Zhang & Yitong Yang & Chun Xia-Bauer, 2021. "Measuring Urban Low-Carbon Sustainability in Four Chinese Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-15, November.
    2. Felipe Teixeira Dias & Gisele Mazon & Priscila Cembranel & Robert Birch & José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra, 2022. "Land Use and Global Environmental Change: An Analytical Proposal Based on A Systematic Review," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Catherine Le Roux & Marius Pretorius, 2016. "Conceptualizing the Limiting Issues Inhibiting Sustainability Embeddedness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-22, April.
    2. Sungjo Hong & Ihl Kweon & Bum-Hyun Lee & Heechul Kim, 2019. "Indicators and Assessment System for Sustainability of Municipalities: A Case Study of South Korea’s Assessment of Sustainability of Cities (ASC)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-21, November.
    3. Kajsa Borgnäs, 2017. "Indicators as ‘circular argumentation constructs’? An input–output analysis of the variable structure of five environmental sustainability country rankings," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 769-790, June.
    4. Iva Glibo & Laura Misener & Joerg Koenigstorfer, 2022. "Strategic Sustainable Development in International Sport Organisations: A Delphi Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-18, August.
    5. Vicent Penadés-Plà & José V. Martí & Tatiana García-Segura & Víctor Yepes, 2017. "Life-Cycle Assessment: A Comparison between Two Optimal Post-Tensioned Concrete Box-Girder Road Bridges," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-21, October.
    6. Vicent Penadés-Plà & Tatiana García-Segura & José V. Martí & Víctor Yepes, 2018. "An Optimization-LCA of a Prestressed Concrete Precast Bridge," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-17, March.
    7. Michiel C. Zijp & Reinout Heijungs & Ester Van der Voet & Dik Van de Meent & Mark A. J. Huijbregts & Anne Hollander & Leo Posthuma, 2015. "An Identification Key for Selecting Methods for Sustainability Assessments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-23, March.
    8. Jose Manuel Diaz‐Sarachaga, 2021. "Shortcomings in reporting contributions towards the sustainable development goals," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 1299-1312, July.
    9. Mateusz Piwowarski & Danuta Miłaszewicz & Małgorzata Łatuszyńska & Mariusz Borawski & Kesra Nermend, 2018. "Application of the Vector Measure Construction Method and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity Ideal Solution for the Analysis of the Dynamics of Changes in the Poverty Levels in the European ," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-24, August.
    10. Andrea Emma Pravitasari & Rista Ardy Priatama & Setyardi Pratika Mulya & Ernan Rustiadi & Alfin Murtadho & Adib Ahmad Kurnia & Izuru Saizen & Candraningratri Ekaputri Widodo, 2022. "Local Sustainability Performance and Its Spatial Interdependency in Urbanizing Java Island: The Case of Jakarta-Bandung Mega Urban Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-16, October.
    11. Dongwook Kim & Sungbum Kim, 2017. "Sustainable Supply Chain Based on News Articles and Sustainability Reports: Text Mining with Leximancer and DICTION," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-44, June.
    12. Anke Meisert & Florian Böttcher, 2019. "Towards a Discourse-Based Understanding of Sustainability Education and Decision Making," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-21, October.
    13. Nomeda Dobrovolskienė & Rima Tamošiūnienė & Audrius Banaitis & Fernando A. F. Ferreira & Nerija Banaitienė & Kamilė Taujanskaitė & Ieva Meidutė-Kavaliauskienė, 2019. "Developing a composite sustainability index for real estate projects using multiple criteria decision making," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 617-635, September.
    14. Etheldreder Trecia Koppa & Innocent Musonda & Sambo Lyson Zulu, 2023. "A Systematic Literature Review on Local Sustainability Assessment Processes for Infrastructure Development Projects in Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-37, January.
    15. Corinna Salzer & Holger Wallbaum & Luis Felipe Lopez & Jean Luc Kouyoumji, 2016. "Sustainability of Social Housing in Asia: A Holistic Multi-Perspective Development Process for Bamboo-Based Construction in the Philippines," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-26, February.
    16. L. M. A. L. Gaudencio & R. Oliveira & W. F. Curi & C. F. D. Santana & J. N. Silva & C. M. B. S. Meira, 2020. "Oil and gas companies operating in Brazil adhere to GRI-G4 essential sustainability indicators: a critical review," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 1123-1144, February.
    17. Shoukohyar, Sajjad & Seddigh, Mohammad Reza, 2020. "Uncovering the dark and bright sides of implementing collaborative forecasting throughout sustainable supply chains: An exploratory approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    18. Chandra, Dheeraj & Kumar, Dinesh, 2021. "Evaluating the effect of key performance indicators of vaccine supply chain on sustainable development of mission indradhanush: A structural equation modeling approach," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    19. Andrea M. Prado & Ronald Arce & Luis E. Lopez & Jaime García & Andy A. Pearson, 2020. "Simulations Versus Case Studies: Effectively Teaching the Premises of Sustainable Development in the Classroom," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 303-327, January.
    20. Justyna Patalas-Maliszewska & Hanna Łosyk, 2020. "An Approach to Assessing Sustainability in the Development of a Manufacturing Company," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-18, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:19:p:5402-:d:272083. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.