Title: Measuring residential sustainability performance: an indexing approach

Authors: Didem Dizdaroglu

Addresses: School of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, Bilkent University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey

Abstract: This research investigates the environmental impacts of urban development by developing a parcel-level sustainability assessment tool to guide sustainable urban development. The paper introduces a GIS-based model called the 'micro-level urban-ecosystem sustainability index (MUSIX)', which has been designed as a policy-making support tool to highlight key environmental issues at a micro-level, concentrating specifically on residential developments. The model has been tested in a comparative study of Angora Evleri (Angora Houses, Turkey) and East Killara (Australia). Despite certain limitations in its implementation, the results of the study demonstrate that a parcel-based spatial analysis can be used as a tool to identify problems in current local policies and to suggest ways to improve their efficiency. As a future research direction, MUSIX could be combined with a new module for the evaluation of alternative development scenarios. By producing accessible, accurate and easily combined parcel-level data, planners, governments and other actors could benefit from the model outputs in many ways during the decision-making process.

Keywords: sustainable development; sustainability assessment; sustainability indicators; GIS-based spatial analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSD.2019.104717

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2019 Vol.22 No.1/2, pp.1 - 23

Received: 25 Mar 2018
Accepted: 21 Mar 2019
Published online: 29 Jan 2020 *

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