A FRAMEWORK OF INDICATOR SYSTEM FOR MEASURING TAIPEI URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

Ever since the Earth Summit was launched at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, the concept of sustainability has exerted significant influence on policy at local level. Sustainable urban development has also beco me an important local strategy for global sustainability. Due to their integrative and forward-looking characteristics, sustainability indic ators have been proposed to measure and evaluate urban development. Af ter discussing the ecological economic dimension of urban sustainabili ty, this paper presents a procedure and a conceptual framework of the indicator system for measuring Taipei's urban sustainability. On the b asis of natural processes and evolving urban development, the approach to Taipei's sustainable development is defined as reinforcing Taipei' s metropolitan life-support system through its economic vitality for e nhancing Taipei's urban productivity and quality and making Taipei a n ational capital with blue-green characteristics. Based on the conceptu al framework of urban ecological economic system, 80 indicators are se lected through participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which can be used as policy-making indicators for measuring Taipei's urban sustainability. The policy-making indicators are further aggrega ted into 10 general public indicators and evaluated using signal light s (green, yellow and red). It is concluded that the proposed indicator system can provide evidence of progress on urban sustainability. Just ification of public expenditure on urban development can therefore be evaluated. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.