Planning Housing e

Sustainability Indicators
There is a set of sustainability indicators for international and national levels. However,
local governments have developed sustainable development indicators for their own
cities, based on Local Agenda 21, since 1993 (UNCSD, 1993), because national and
international indicators are commonly not useful at a local level

Why Develop Sustainability Indicators?
There is agreement between researchers on the role of sustainability indicators in
measuring progress toward sustainability (Josza and Brown, 2005). Additionally, the
UN (2002) identifies that many countries have used the indicators to:

1. Put critical issues on the political agenda.
2. Assist in recognising key trends in priority sectors.
3. Assist in detecting the state of sustainable development in addition to informing decision-makers and the general public at both local and national levels.
4. Encourage national dialogue about sustainable development.
5. Assist in evaluating the achievement of government goals and reconsidering the need to reset them.
6. Help in preparing and monitoring plans.
7. Assist in the evaluation of the performance of policies when applying the plans.
8. Clarify the sustainable development concepts in practice.
9. Direct state budgets, sectoral programmes and national programmes on
sustainability.