Sustainable city rankings, benchmarking and indexes: Looking into the black box

Abstract

City rankings, benchmarking and indexes are a global phenomenon as public and private institutions across the world foster city performance measures. These tools are allegedly useful to guide and evaluate policies implemented by local authorities in diverse fields, but are especially prominent in the field of sustainability. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge about the real methodological basis of this type of tool. The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate the measurement and monitoring practices of 21 urban sustainability rankings, benchmarks and indexes paying special attention to methodological issues — i.e. shedding light into the black box of the practices. The findings indicate that these tools for urban measurement tend to neglect complex causalities and they lack transparency in relation to data collection, weighting and the aggregation process in their design. Similarly, these tools tend to be biased and as a result, they tend to ignore badly ranked cities and reinforce existing stereotypes. Implications for scholars, practitioners and public decision makers are discussed.