Measuring Urban Sustainability: Comparative Analysis of Global Frameworks in Urban Context

Cities worldwide are experiencing mounting and interconnected pressures, including rapid urbanization, the climate emergency, and widening social inequalities. These challenges manifest in fragmented ecosystems, increased exposure to climate hazards, and uneven access to green space and essential services. Addressing such complexities requires innovative policies supported by robust, evidence-based tools that help cities measure progress, guide decision-making, and learn from one another.

This report presents a comparative analysis of selected global and thematic urban assessment frameworks to better understand how different tools conceptualize urban sustainability, structure indicator systems, and translate data into decision-support outputs. Using a combination of typological review and semantic similarity analysis, the study examines the Urban Monitoring Framework (UMF), Park City Index, and a range of sectoral and thematic tools, including those focused on urban nature, resilience, proximity, certification, and finance.

The findings reveal a high degree of thematic convergence across frameworks. At the same time, the analysis highlights important differences in methodological orientation, indicator granularity, and operational focus, reflecting the diverse mandates, scales, and governance contexts in which these tools are applied.

The report also identifies key gaps and opportunities, particularly in relation to financing, economic valuation, operational readiness, and local capacity constraints. Building on these insights, it proposes directions for strengthening interoperability, improving practical applicability, and enhancing alignment between place-based assessment tools and global monitoring systems. Overall, the study contributes to ongoing efforts to advance more coherent, comparable, and actionable urban data systems in support of sustainable, inclusive, and resilient urban development.