Assessing the sustainability dimension at local scale: Case study of Spanish cities

Nowadays, cities host most of the world population. As a result of human activities within their boundaries, most greenhouse gases emissions, natural resources consumption and waste generation are concentrated in urban areas. For these reasons, studies focusing on assessing the sustainability of cities have increased in recent decades. Bearing in mind the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic and environmental), this study aims to evaluate the level of sustainability of 31 representative Spanish cities through multiple sustainability indicators, which have been aggregated into a composite sustainability indicator that is reported by a three-letter code. Thus, each pillar of sustainability is represented by a letter A, B or C in the three-letter code, so that the letter A corresponds to the best rate and C to the worst. Within the geographical and socio-demographic framework of Spain, the results show considerable differences between the cities in the south and the north of the country. Accordingly, most of the cities with the best sustainability scores according to the award of at least two A in the three-letters code are located in the north of the country. Examples of this category are Pamplona and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (both ranked as AAA). Cities such as Murcia, Gijon, Badajoz and Huelva obtained the worst ranking with the CCC rating. For this group of cities, actions for the improvement of sustainability have been identifiedThis research was supported by a project granted by the Spanish Government and FEDER/Ministry of Science and Innovation – Spanish National Research Agency (CTQ2016-75136-P) and by a project granted by Xunta de Galicia (project ref. ED431F 2016/001). Dr. S.G.-G. would like to express her gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for financial support (Grant reference RYC-2014-14984). The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C 2017/29 and to the CRETUS Strategic Partnership (ED431E2018/01). All these programs are co-funded by FEDER (UE)S