The Dashboard of Sustainability to measure the local urban sustainable development: The case study of Padua Municipality

The adoption of suitable indicators is fundamental to implement sustainable development at the local level. It helps in the analysis and evaluation; supports the decisional process and helps the communication between the citizens and the society, in general. Furthermore, the aggregated indexes - by representing the observed context in a simple way - may help the community in the definition of effective improvement goals and also serve as important tools to monitor the fulfillment of the planned objectives. The Dashboard of Sustainability (DS) is a mathematical and graphical tool designed to integrate the complex influences of sustainability and support the decision-making process by creating concise evaluations. The city of Padua, Italy, agreed to use the DS in its Local Agenda 21 project, financed by the Italian Ministry of Environment. The available data were sufficient to design 61 useful indicators of environmental protection, economic development, and social promotion. The results of the analysis were discussed in Padua's community forum on the Local Agenda 21 process. The graphical and numerical results helped Padua reach a consensus on the plan for future sustainability, one that was understood and accepted by all the stakeholders. In order to adapt this tool to a local context, two changes in the methodologies were necessary: to measure urban sustainability, for which "ad hoc" set indicators were used; and to allow a comparative evaluation, for which the performances of Padua were evaluated over time. These changes were possible, thanks to the flexibility of such tool. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.