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

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 and Amanda Alderton

Environment and Planning B, 2025, vol. 52, issue 5, 1252-1270

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.

Keywords: Software development; open science; healthy cities; sustainability; city planning; urban indicators; urban policy; spatial analysis; research translation; action research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:52:y:2025:i:5:p:1252-1270

DOI: 10.1177/23998083241292102

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