IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v52y2025i5p1252-1270.html

Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators: Collaborative development of an open science toolkit for calculating and reporting on urban indicators internationally

Author

Listed:
  • Carl Higgs
  • Melanie Lowe
  • Billie Giles-Corti
  • Geoff Boeing
  • Xavier Delclòs-Alió
  • Anna Puig-Ribera
  • Deepti Adlakha
  • Shiqin Liu
  • Júlio Celso Borello Vargas
  • Marianela Castillo-Riquelme
  • Afshin Jafari
  • Javier Molina-García
  • Vuokko Heikinheimo
  • Ana Queralt
  • Ester Cerin
  • Eugen Resendiz
  • Dhirendra Singh
  • Sebastian Rodriguez
  • Esra Suel
  • Marc Domínguez-Mallafré
  • Yang Ye
  • Amanda Alderton

Abstract

Measuring and monitoring progress towards achieving healthy, equitable and sustainable cities is a priority for planners, policymakers and researchers in diverse contexts globally. Yet data collection, analysis, visualisation and reporting on policy and spatial indicators involve specialised knowledge, skills, and collaboration across disciplines. Integrated open-source tools for calculating and communicating urban indicators for diverse urban contexts are needed, which provide the multiple streams of evidence required to influence policy agendas and enable local changes towards healthier and more sustainable cities. This paper reports on the development of open-source software for planning, analysis and generation of data, maps and reports on policy and spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for healthy and sustainable cities. We engaged a collaborative network of researchers and practitioners from diverse geographic contexts through an online survey and workshops, to understand and progressively meet their requirements for policy and spatial indicators. We outline our framework for action research-informed open-source software development and discuss benefits and challenges of this approach. The resulting Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators software is designed to meet the needs of researchers, planners, policy makers and community advocates in diverse settings for planning, calculating and disseminating policy and spatial urban indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Higgs & Melanie Lowe & Billie Giles-Corti & Geoff Boeing & Xavier Delclòs-Alió & Anna Puig-Ribera & Deepti Adlakha & Shiqin Liu & Júlio Celso Borello Vargas & Marianela Castillo-Riquelme & Afs, 2025. "Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators: Collaborative development of an open science toolkit for calculating and reporting on urban indicators internationally," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 52(5), pages 1252-1270, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:52:y:2025:i:5:p:1252-1270
    DOI: 10.1177/23998083241292102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23998083241292102
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/23998083241292102?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. Alex Karner & Rafael H. M. Pereira & Steven Farber, 2024. "Correction to: Advances and pitfalls in measuring transportation equityTransportation," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 1179-1179, June.
    2. repec:osf:socarx:cua35_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Geoff Boeing & Carl Higgs & Shiqin Liu & Billie Giles-Corti & James F Sallis & Ester Cerin & Melanie Lowe & Deepti Adlakha & Erica Hinckson & Anne Vernez Moudon & Deborah Salvo & Marc A Adams & Ligia , 2022. "Using Open Data and Open-Source Software to Develop Spatial Indicators of Urban Design and Transport Features for Achieving Healthy and Sustainable Cities," Papers 2205.05240, arXiv.org.
    4. Liu, Shiqin & Higgs, Carl & Arundel, Jonathan & Boeing, Geoff & Cerdera, Nicholas & Moctezuma, David & Cerin, Ester & Adlakha, Deepti & Lowe, Melanie & Giles-Corti, Billie, 2021. "A Generalized Framework for Measuring Pedestrian Accessibility around the World Using Open Data," SocArXiv cua35, Center for Open Science.
    5. John P. Wilson & Kevin Butler & Song Gao & Yingjie Hu & Wenwen Li & Dawn J. Wright, 2021. "A Five-Star Guide for Achieving Replicability and Reproducibility When Working with GIS Software and Algorithms," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 111(5), pages 1311-1317, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Filippos Alogdianakis & Loukas Dimitriou, 2024. "Incorporating equity in multi-objective optimal spatial budget allocation of transit services by tessellating the urban continuum," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 699-741, October.
    2. Seung Jun Choi & Junfeng Jiao, 2024. "Uncovering electric vehicle ownership disparities using K-means clustering analysis: A case study of Austin, Texas," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 2403-2456, December.
    3. Rebekka Volk & Mihir Rambhia & Elias Naber & Frank Schultmann, 2022. "Urban Resource Assessment, Management, and Planning Tools for Land, Ecosystems, Urban Climate, Water, and Materials—A Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-22, June.
    4. Geoff Boeing & Carl Higgs & Shiqin Liu & Billie Giles-Corti & James F Sallis & Ester Cerin & Melanie Lowe & Deepti Adlakha & Erica Hinckson & Anne Vernez Moudon & Deborah Salvo & Marc A Adams & Ligia , 2022. "Using Open Data and Open-Source Software to Develop Spatial Indicators of Urban Design and Transport Features for Achieving Healthy and Sustainable Cities," Papers 2205.05240, arXiv.org.
    5. Federico Mara & Chiara Anselmi & Federica Deri & Valerio Cutini, 2025. "The Divergent Geographies of Urban Amenities: A Data Comparison Between OpenStreetMap and Google Maps," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(20), pages 1-23, October.
    6. Paraskevas Nikolaou & Socrates Basbas, 2023. "Urban Development and Transportation: Investigating Spatial Performance Indicators of 12 European Union Coastal Regions," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-21, September.
    7. Jasso Chávez, José Arturo & Manaugh, Kevin, 2025. "How does the spatial scale impact accessibility analysis and equity? The case of accessibility to supermarkets in Montreal," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    8. Fraser, Timothy & Van Woert, Katherine & Olivieri, Sophia & Baron, Jonathan & Buckley, Katelyn & Lalli, Pamela, 2025. "Cycling cities: Measuring urban mobility mixing in bikeshare networks," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    9. repec:osf:osfxxx:95qbv_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. (Melrose) Pan, Meiyu & Dahal, Pankaj & Lim, Hyeonsup & Pandey, Birat, 2025. "Geospatial analysis of freight accessibility and job attraction: The role of interstate ramps, airports, ports, and rail," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    11. Junfeng Jiao & Seung Jun Choi, 2025. "Built environment and public electric vehicle charging: an investigation using POI data and computer vision," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 529-563, June.
    12. Meng Gao & Ke Ma & Renke He & Carlo Vezzoli & Nuo Li, 2023. "A Bibliometric Analysis of Sustainable Product Design Methods from 1999 to 2022: Trends, Progress, and Disparities between China and the Rest of the World," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-24, August.
    13. Aeschliman, Spencer & Huang, Erik & Hofstra, Amy & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2025. "Examining riders' subjective equity standards for transit Service: How will they shape future transit planning and operations?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 225-238.
    14. Roper, Josephine & Ng, Matthew & Huck, Jonathan & Pettit, Christopher, 2024. "A participatory mapping approach to capturing perceived walkability," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    15. Winston Yap & Jiat-Hwee Chang & Filip Biljecki, 2023. "Incorporating networks in semantic understanding of streetscapes: Contextualising active mobility decisions," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(6), pages 1416-1437, July.
    16. Santana Palacios, Manuel A., 2025. "Unpacking data representation issues in distributional accessibility impact assessments: Lessons from Bogotá's urban gondola," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Barboza, Matheus & Giannotti, Mariana & Grigolon, Anna & Geurs, Karst, 2025. "Transit fares and space-time accessibility: measuring inequalities in park accessibility for São Paulo favela residents using mobile phone and smart card data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    18. Bartzokas-Tsiompras, Alexandros & Bakogiannis, Efthimios & Nikitas, Alexandros, 2023. "Global microscale walkability ratings and rankings: A novel composite indicator for 59 European city centres," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    19. Liansheng Hu & Yongqin Xi, 2023. "Evaluation of Effective Factors in Achieving Ecological City in the Direction of Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-16, April.
    20. Yao Lu & Mao-en He & Chang Liu, 2023. "Tourism Competitiveness Evaluation Model of Urban Historical and Cultural Districts Based on Multi-Source Data and the AHP Method: A Case Study in Suzhou Ancient City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-21, December.
    21. Khaled Alawadi & Ngoc Hong Nguyen & Mariam Alkaabi, 2023. "The edge and the center in neighborhood planning units: assessing permeability and edge attractiveness in Abu Dhabi," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 677-705, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:sae:envirb:v:52:y:2025:i:5:p:1252-1270. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.