IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjusxx/v22y2018i3p308-321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Certifications systems as independent and rigorous tools for assessing urban sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Amr Ah. Gouda
  • Houshmand E. Masoumi

Abstract

Urban sustainability certification (USC) systems are witnessing a wide dissemination and some are used as globally relevant tools. In addition, USCs are being marketed as independent tools capable of assessing sustainability not only comprehensively but also using rigorous measures. The comprehensiveness and rigour of their assessment rest on a combination of simple criteria (directly prescribing indicators with quantitative/qualitative measures) and nested ones (hosting other references for sustainable planning (RsSP)) prescribed within each USC. However, such scope seems over-ambitious due to the complexity of urban sustainability and its contextual sensitivity. Accordingly, this study aims to delve in USCs and examine their rigour and independence. The study begins by analyzing the concepts of street connectivity and compactness in LEED-ND (the most rigorous USC) because both are prominent concepts and have a number of earmarked criteria with simple structure. Then, criteria with nested structure and their RsSP found in four USCs are collected and analyzed in terms of frequencies, weights, and geographic domains. This analysis aims to uncover how dependent USCs are on other RsSP and how compatible are the geographic domains of both. The results refute the rigour of LEED-ND's assessment in terms of compactness and connectivity because the prescribed measures are insufficient to assess the different variables of both concepts. Moreover, USCs are highly dependent on local RsSP (only relevant to USC's country of origin), which disagrees with their characterization as independent or international tools.

Suggested Citation

  • Amr Ah. Gouda & Houshmand E. Masoumi, 2018. "Certifications systems as independent and rigorous tools for assessing urban sustainability," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 308-321, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rjusxx:v:22:y:2018:i:3:p:308-321
    DOI: 10.1080/12265934.2017.1398103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/12265934.2017.1398103
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/12265934.2017.1398103?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Attila Buzási & Bettina Szimonetta Jäger, 2021. "Exploratory Analysis of Urban Sustainability by Applying a Strategy-Based Tailor-Made Weighting Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-18, June.
    2. Jonas Lind & Tove Malmqvist & Josefin Wangel, 2020. "Developing Citylab Post-Construction—A Swedish Certification System to Evaluate the Sustainability of Urban Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-22, May.

    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:taf:rjusxx:v:22:y:2018:i:3:p:308-321. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rjus20 .

    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.