Assessing urban mobility sustainability through a system of indicators: The case of Greek cities

Abstract

The World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, although not the first policy document related to sustainability, led to the development of the most widely accepted definition of sustainable development. Nowadays, almost three decades later and despite the great amount of relevant research that was conducted, many cities in the world still present poor conditions in terms of sustainability and face intense environmental, economic and social problems. According to studies, a great percentage of the abovementioned problems either derive directly, or are highly associated with, the operation of the city’s transport system: a fact that highlights the emergence of sustainable urban mobility. In this framework, the use of appropriate indicators as a methodological tool can play a key role for monitoring and assessing the mobility conditions in an urban area. Towards this direction, the main objective of the present study is to develop a system of appropriate indicators for assessing the sustainability of the current mobility conditions in the Greek urban areas. More specifically the development of this new sustainable urban mobility indicator system is based on the main findings of an extensive literature review on relevant indicator systems accordingly adjusted to the specific characteristics of the Greek urban areas.