Cities are now on the front lines of tackling today’s biggest sustainability challenges—from climate change and environmental stress to social inequality and economic resilience. In response, a growing number of tools have emerged to assess and compare how cities are performing. Among these, the best urban sustainability indices have become particularly influential. They help shape investment decisions, guide urban policy, and influence how cities are viewed by citizens and the global community alike.
But a basic question keeps resurfacing: Are these indices actually measuring what truly matters, or just what’s easiest to count? First of all, let’s take a look at the differences in focus, dimensions, and data sources across the indices.
A сloser look: best urban sustainability indices in action
Over the past decade, sustainability indices have become go-to tools for governments, researchers, and international organizations trying to understand urban performance. These indices boil down complex realities into more digestible scores and rankings—measuring everything from environmental impact to social equity, economic strength, and governance quality.
Here’s a quick tour of some of the best urban sustainability indices in the field today—each with its own structure, priorities, and way of seeing the urban world.
Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index
Created by global design and consultancy firm Arcadis, this index was launched between 2014-2016 and is regularly updated. It covers around 100 cities across the world and evaluates them across three core pillars—people (social), planet (environmental), and profit (economic). A fourth pillar (progress) was added in 2024.
Key areas of focus include:
- people: personal well-being, working life, urban living
- planet: immediate needs of citizens, long-term impacts, investment in low-carbon infrastructure, city resilience, green policy
- profit: access to workforce, ease of commute, business infrastructure, economic performance
- progress: measures sustainable progress using key indicators that can be tracked over a 10-year period
It draws on a mix of international databases like the World Bank and WHO, open data, and proprietary sources.
Why it stands out:
- tracks changes over time, enabling trend analysis
- clear and public methodology
- balanced focus on social, environmental, and economic factors
- easy-to-understand structure
IESE Cities in Motion Index
Developed by IESE Business School in Spain, this index has been updated yearly since 2012 and includes data on about 180 cities. To analyze the quality of life, sustainability, and innovation capacity of the world’s major cities, the authors use nine key dimensions:
- human capital
- social cohesion
- economy
- environment
- governance
- urban planning
- international outreach
- technology
- mobility and transportation
Why it stands out:
- deep, detailed structure
- includes harder-to-measure aspects like international influence and social trust
- based on public data and academic sources
Corporate Knights Sustainable Cities Index
Created by the Canadian media and research company Corporate Knights, this index was first published in 2022. It evaluates 70 cities, focusing mainly on their environmental performance.
Key areas of focus include:
- scope 1 GHG emissions
- consumption-based emissions
- particulate air pollution
- open public space
- water access
- water consumption
- automobile dependence
- road infrastructure efficiency
- sustainable transport
- solid waste generated
- climate change resilience
The Corporate Knights index adjusts environmental scores downward if a city performs poorly on key social or economic issues, reflecting the view that true sustainability requires progress on all fronts.
The index draws on a range of public and institutional data sources (e.g., C40 Knowledge Hub, CDP Cities, World Bank, and UN Habitat Urban Indicators Database). Cities are encouraged to engage in the data hub for data submission to participate in the ranking.
Why it stands out:
• focuses primarily on environmental performance with social and economic safeguards
• penalizes poor results in key non-environmental areas, promoting holistic sustainability
• includes both scope 1 and consumption-based emissions
• uses trusted international data sources and encourages direct city participation
City Resilience Index (Arup)
This index, developed by Arup with support from the Rockefeller Foundation since 2013, is based on evidence gathered from 28 cities. It’s based on the City Resilience Framework and focuses on how well cities can bounce back from shocks and stresses—not just how sustainable they are on paper.
Its four core areas:
- health & wellbeing
- economy & society
- infrastructure & environment
- leadership & strategy
Each is broken down into traits like inclusiveness, adaptability, and robustness. The data comes from expert interviews, surveys, and insights from the 100 Resilient Cities initiative.
This index isn’t designed as a typical ranking or even a full analytical database. Instead, it serves as a practical guide for governments and organizations to assess—or self-assess—how sustainable their cities are. That’s why the full calculation method is openly shared in detailed reports on the project’s website. For the same reason, you won’t find a global leaderboard of top-performing cities. Instead, the results are published only for selected cities, which aren’t necessarily the ones leading the pack.
Why it stands out:
- focuses on resilience, not just sustainability
- uses qualitative judgments, not only numbers
- encourages long-term, systems thinking in city planning
UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index
Launched by the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), this index has been applied to over 400 cities since the early 2010s and is often used in national urban reviews.
It looks at six dimensions:
- productivity
- infrastructure
- quality of life
- equity and inclusion
- environmental sustainability
- governance
Sources include government data, household surveys, and UN statistics.
Why it stands out:
- strong focus on equity and governance
- aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Green City Index (Siemens/EIU)
The index is the result of collaboration between Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit. It was been published since 2009-2012, covering 120 cities worldwide. It is mainly used to compare cities within regions.
What sets it apart is its exclusive focus on environmental performance:
- CO₂ emissions,
- energy use,
- public transport,
- green buildings,
- waste,
- water,
- air quality,
- environmental policy.
Why it stands out:
- Laser focus on environmental metrics
- Includes policy examples and case studies
- Fills a gap left by broader indices
Differences in ranking
With such different priorities and methodologies, it’s no surprise that the best urban sustainability indices often produce very different rankings. But that diversity also highlights a deeper truth: How we define sustainability significantly affects what we choose to measure—and ultimately, how cities act on it.
What the best urban sustainability indices actually measure
Behind the sleek rankings and color-coded maps of urban sustainability indices lies a dense forest of methodological decisions—each with its own assumptions, limitations, and consequences. These frameworks seek to translate the complex, multidimensional idea of sustainability into simplified comparative tools. But how exactly do they do it, and what are the trade-offs? Read more in Best Urban Sustainability Indices: Measuring What Matters or Chasing the Measurable? (II) (coming soon)
You can also read more about the principal questions of sustainable development here and about the different aspects of sustainable urbanization here.
