IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v28y2020i4p507-520.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the urban sustainable development in cities through a Composite Index: The case of Portugal

Author

Listed:
  • Margarida Rodrigues
  • Mário Franco

Abstract

This study aims to systematize indicators and indices that allow measurement sustainable development in cities and towns (economic, social, and environmental). It is one dimension that is inseparable from current cities and its extent is a major concern for political decision‐makers worldwide, and also present their individual weights in that performance. The results allow construction of a Composite Index for Sustainability supported by multivariate statistical techniques (Exploratory Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis), confirming its scientific quality and robustness, and forming the main contribution of this study. The results also show that the urban sustainability dimension is visible in the 308 Portuguese cities/towns in a tri‐partite way. Economic sustainability (weighting of 0.386) has been strengthened by entrepreneurship, which has created new business supported by public–private partnerships, such as living labs, which has contributed to less urban unemployment. Standing out in social sustainability (weighting of 0.245) is the development of projects promoting cohesion and social inclusion and actions to improve social infrastructure in Portuguese towns. Finally, environmental sustainability (weighting of 0.369), which locally in Portugal, has emphasized waste management and actions to preserve and protect natural resources and the environment in general. However, more effective actions are needed for their sustainability to continue to improve substantially in the long term, for example, environmentally. Furthermore, the towns/cities analysed must change to the circular economy model as proposed by the European Union.

Suggested Citation

  • Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2020. "Measuring the urban sustainable development in cities through a Composite Index: The case of Portugal," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 507-520, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:28:y:2020:i:4:p:507-520
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.2005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2005
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.2005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sooksiri Wichaisri & Apichat Sopadang, 2018. "Trends and Future Directions in Sustainable Development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Hiroaki Suzuki & Arish Dastur & Sebastian Moffatt & Nanae Yabuki & Hinako Maruyama, . "Eco2 Cities : Ecological Cities as Economic Cities [Ciudades Eco2 : ciudades ecológicas como ciudades económicas]," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2453, September.
    3. Carmen Echebarria & Jose M. Barrutia & Itziar Aguado & Vanessa Apaolaza & Patrick Hartmann, 2016. "Capturing the benefits that emerge from regional sustainability networks: The Castile–La Mancha network of sustainable cities and towns," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 27-49, March.
    4. Bjørn Asheim & Lars Coenen & Jan Vang, 2007. "Face-to-Face, Buzz, and Knowledge Bases: Sociospatial Implications for Learning, Innovation, and Innovation Policy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 25(5), pages 655-670, October.
    5. Nicola Dempsey & Glen Bramley & Sinéad Power & Caroline Brown, 2011. "The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(5), pages 289-300, September.
    6. Maria do Rosário Cabrita & Virgílio Cruz-Machado & Cristina Cabrita, 2013. "Managing creative industries in the context of knowledge-based urban development," International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(4), pages 318-337.
    7. Funk, Jeffrey L., 2015. "IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 861-874.
    8. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    9. Joar Skrede, 2016. "What may culture contribute to urban sustainability? Critical reflections on the uses of culture in urban development in Oslo and beyond," Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 408-425, October.
    10. Marichela Sepe, 2013. "Urban history and cultural resources in urban regeneration: a case of creative waterfront renewal," Planning Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 595-613, October.
    11. Ben Letaifa, Soumaya, 2015. "How to strategize smart cities: Revealing the SMART model," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1414-1419.
    12. Vito Albino & Umberto Berardi & Rosa Maria Dangelico, 2015. "Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 3-21, January.
    13. Camagni, Roberto & Capello, Roberta & Nijkamp, Peter, 1998. "Towards sustainable city policy: an economy-environment technology nexus," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 103-118, January.
    14. Berrone, Pascual & Gelabert, Liliana & Fosfuri, Andrea, 2009. "The impact of symbolic and substantive actions on environmental legitimacy," IESE Research Papers D/778, IESE Business School.
    15. Glaeser, Edward L. & Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2010. "Urban economics and entrepreneurship," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 1-14, January.
    16. Jin-Liao He & Hans Gebhardt, 2014. "Space of Creative Industries: A Case Study of Spatial Characteristics of Creative Clusters in Shanghai," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(11), pages 2351-2368, November.
    17. Sara Brorström & Daniela Argento & Giuseppe Grossi & Anna Thomasson & Roland Almqvist, 2018. "Translating sustainable and smart city strategies into performance measurement systems," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 193-202, April.
    18. Korhonen, Jouni & Honkasalo, Antero & Seppälä, Jyri, 2018. "Circular Economy: The Concept and its Limitations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 37-46.
    19. Liviu Gabriel CRETU, 2012. "Smart Cities Design using Event-driven Paradigm and Semantic Web," Informatica Economica, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 16(4), pages 57-67.
    20. Wendy Mendes, 2008. "Implementing Social and Environmental Policies in Cities: The Case of Food Policy in Vancouver, Canada," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 942-967, December.
    21. Tara Vinodrai, 2006. "Reproducing Toronto’s Design Ecology: Career Paths, Intermediaries, and Local Labor Markets," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 82(3), pages 237-263, July.
    22. Umberto Berardi, 2013. "Sustainability assessment of urban communities through rating systems," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 1573-1591, December.
    23. Henry Kaiser, 1974. "An index of factorial simplicity," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 39(1), pages 31-36, March.
    24. Michaela Stanickova & Lukáš Melecký, 2018. "Understanding of resilience in the context of regional development using composite index approach: the case of European Union NUTS-2 regions," Regional Studies, Regional Science, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 231-254, January.
    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. Izabela Racka, 2021. "Drivers of Subregional Housing Markets in Poland," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2B), pages 810-834.
    2. Bin Xue & Bingsheng Liu & Tao Liang & Dong Zhao & Tao Wang & Xingbin Chen, 2022. "A heterogeneous decision criteria system evaluating sustainable infrastructure development: From the lens of multidisciplinary stakeholder engagement," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 556-579, August.
    3. Sufyan Habib & Mohammed Arshad Khan & Nawaf N. Hamadneh, 2022. "Gender Sensitivity in Accessing Healthcare Services: Evidence from Saudi Arabia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Carmen Ruiz-Puente, 2021. "Proposal of a Conceptual Model to Represent Urban-Industrial Systems from the Analysis of Existing Worldwide Experiences," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-17, August.
    5. Panagiotis E. Petrakis & Anna-Maria Kanzola, 2022. "On the Micro-Foundations of Creative Economy: Life Satisfaction and Social Identity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-17, April.
    6. Jesús Rodrigo-Comino & Barbara Ermini, 2021. "Are Cities Truly Dispersed? A Long-Term Analysis of Vertical Profile of Settlements in Athens’ Metropolitan Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-14, March.
    7. Yongyue Ji & Lijun Zhang, 2023. "Comparative analysis of spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yellow River Economic Belt," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 979-994, January.
    8. Clara Pérez‐Cornejo & Pablo Rodríguez‐Gutiérrez & Esther de Quevedo‐Puente, 2023. "City reputation and the role of sustainability in cities," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 1444-1455, June.

    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. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2018. "Measuring the Performance in Creative Cities: Proposal of a Multidimensional Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-21, November.
    2. Vu, Khuong & Hartley, Kris, 2018. "Promoting smart cities in developing countries: Policy insights from Vietnam," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 845-859.
    3. Sung-Su Jo & Hoon Han & Yountaik Leem & Sang-Ho Lee, 2021. "Sustainable Smart Cities and Industrial Ecosystem: Structural and Relational Changes of the Smart City Industries in Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-17, September.
    4. Jiangang Shi & Kaifeng Duan & Guangdong Wu & Hongyun Si & Rui Zhang, 2022. "Sustainability at the community level: A bibliometric journey around a set of sustainability‐related terms," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 256-274, February.
    5. Chiara Garau & Valentina Maria Pavan, 2018. "Evaluating Urban Quality: Indicators and Assessment Tools for Smart Sustainable Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-18, February.
    6. Parul Gupta & Sumedha Chauhan & M. P. Jaiswal, 2019. "Classification of Smart City Research - a Descriptive Literature Review and Future Research Agenda," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 661-685, June.
    7. Flavia Michelotto & Luiz Antonio Joia, 2023. "Unveiling the Smart City Concept: Perspectives from an Emerging Market via the Social Representation Theory," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-16, May.
    8. Jacek Rudewicz, 2023. "Smart City Concept and Sustainable Development," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(4), pages 418-430.
    9. Schiavone, Francesco & Paolone, Francesco & Mancini, Daniela, 2019. "Business model innovation for urban smartization," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 210-219.
    10. Insaf Khelladi & Sylvaine Castellano & David Kalisz, 2020. "The smartization of metropolitan cities: the case of Paris," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1301-1325, December.
    11. Desdemoustier, Jonathan & Crutzen, Nathalie & Giffinger, Rudolf, 2019. "Municipalities' understanding of the Smart City concept: An exploratory analysis in Belgium," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 129-141.
    12. Ward Ooms & Marjolein C. J. Caniëls & Nadine Roijakkers & Dieudonnee Cobben, 2020. "Ecosystems for smart cities: tracing the evolution of governance structures in a dutch smart city initiative," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1225-1258, December.
    13. Camboim, Guilherme Freitas & Zawislak, Paulo Antônio & Pufal, Nathália Amarante, 2019. "Driving elements to make cities smarter: Evidences from European projects," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 154-167.
    14. Miguel Manjon & Zineb Aouni & Nathalie Crutzen, 2022. "Green and digital entrepreneurship in smart cities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 68(2), pages 429-462, April.
    15. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 70-97.
    16. Li Zhao & Zhi-ying Tang & Xin Zou, 2019. "Mapping the Knowledge Domain of Smart-City Research: A Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-28, November.
    17. Mora, Luca & Gerli, Paolo & Ardito, Lorenzo & Messeni Petruzzelli, Antonio, 2023. "Smart city governance from an innovation management perspective: Theoretical framing, review of current practices, and future research agenda," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    18. Primož Pevcin, 2019. "Smart city label: past, present, and future," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 37(2), pages 801-822.
    19. Wang, Mengmeng & Zhou, Tao & Wang, Di, 2020. "Tracking the evolution processes of smart cities in China by assessing performance and efficiency," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    20. Arabela Briciu & Victor-Alexandru Briciu & Androniki Kavoura, 2020. "Evaluating How ‘Smart’ Brașov, Romania Can Be Virtually via a Mobile Application for Cultural Tourism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-17, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wly:sustdv:v:28:y:2020:i:4:p:507-520. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    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.