Measuring Urban Sustainability Through Common Indicators and Peer City Benchmarking: Assessing Sustainability Assets for Performance Improvement and Economic and Environmental Progress in Delaware

Abstract

The report summarizes first-year research of a three-year study of pathways to urban sustainability. The research team selected the STAR Communities assessment model as the backbone for its analysis. This framework offers a menu-based system for enabling city managers and leaders to build paths of more inclusive, equitable investment, and collaboration within and across departments and with residents and the business community to advance sustainability goals. It is a leading framework for promoting, assessing, and certifying sustainability progress of cities, counties, and communities. The report examines the potential for utilizing the STAR framework as a tool in Wilmington’s and Newark’s sustainability plan-making. The second year of this research program uses the STAR framework as a tool to identify cost-effective, environmentally sound strategies for strengthening the contributions of each city’s sustainability assets, with a focus on the creation of a rooftop distributed solar energy plant.

Keywords: sustainability, sustainable cities, solar cities, urban sustainability, sustainability assessment

JEL Classification: O2, O21, O3, O35, O38, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q51, Q52, Q53, Q54, Q55, Q56, Q57, Q58, R50, R58