Articles/Publications on Measuring Progress

Indicators and Information Systems for Sustainable Development
A report compiled by the late Donella Meadows for The Balaton Group is now offered in a downloadable PDF version from the International Institute for Sustainable Development website. The report focuses on the importance of indicators, and provides guidance on generating and implementing indicators of sustainable development.

Neighborhood Sustainability Indicators Guidebook
A 68-page guide focused upon one specific challenge: How do neighborhood residents ensure that their neighborhood becomes more sustainable in the long term?

Measuring Progress Toward Sustainability
Scientists at the EPA's National Risk Management Research Lab’s Sustainable Technology Division have proposed a system of metrics to track progress toward sustainability by balancing the three goals of economic value-added, pollution prevention, and social good. Sustainable Development and Sustainability Metrics presents a full discussion of the NRMRL model.

Planning for Sustainable Development: Measuring Progress in Plans
A working paper from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, copyright 1999. This study sets forth a set of six principles that define and operationalize the concept of sustainable development. Using these six principles, a sample of 30 comprehensive plans is evaluated to determine how well the policies of plans support sustainable development.

This Place on Earth 2002: Measuring What Matters
This report from Northwest Environment Watch looks at the region's progress in sustainability by assessing trends in ten key areas, from salmon health and spread of sprawl to income distribution and energy efficiency.

Genuine Progress Indicator
Redefining Progress, an Oakland-based public policy organization, in 1995 created a more accurate measure of progress than GDP, called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It starts with the same accounting framework as the GDP, but then makes some crucial distinctions: It adds in the economic contributions of household and volunteer work, but subtracts factors such as crime, pollution, and family breakdown. They update the GPI on a yearly basis, and the past and current Genuine Progress Indicator reports are available online.

Neighborhood Sustainability Indicators Guidebook (PDF)
Produced for the Urban Ecology Coalition in Minneapolis, this guidebook is designed to help local residents, officials and other stakeholders develop sustainability indicators for their own neighborhoods.

Community Indicator Projects That Work: How Five Communities Gauge Progress
Provides an overview of five successful efforts to set goals and measure progress by one of the nation's leading researchers on community indicator projects.

Informing Our Nation: Improving How to Understand and Assess the USA's Position and Progress (PDF 3.6 MB)
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) sets forth options for Congress to consider in establishing a system of key national indicators.

Vermont's Economic Well-Being Double the National Average
The University of Vermont used the Genuine Progress Indicator to measure economic and social welfare in the state.

Jacksonville's Indicator Program Reaches for Sustainability
Provides three views on the success of the indicators program in Jacksonville, Florida, now in its second decade.

If the GDP is Up, Why is America Down?
This article that originally appeared in The Atlantic argues why we need new measures of progress, why we do not have them, and how they would change the social and political landscape. 

Why Sustainable Community Indicators? People Need a Reality Check 
Describes sustainable community indicators as a theoretical and practical framework for defining the meaning of a sustainable community and for measuring progress towards that goal. 

Sustainability Starts in Your Community: A Community Indicators Guide (PDF)
This publication from Redefining Progress and Earth Day Network draws on the experience of first-generation community indicators projects to outline a process for successful inidicators initiatives, including groundwork and steps for involving the larger community. Redefining Progress also offers a 1999 Community Indicators Case Study in PDF and The Community Indicators Handbook, a 1997 publication is available for purchase, that draws on the experience of dozens of projects around the United States, and presents how-to's and resources for tailoring an indicator project to the specific needs of a community.

Assessing Sustainable Development: Principles in Practice
Introduces the Bellagio principles as guidelines for the entire assessment process including the choice and design of indicators, their interpretation, and communication of the results. They are intended for use in starting and improving assessment activities of community groups, non-government organizations, corporations, national governments, and international institutions.

International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
IISD offers a special selection of several publications on measuring sustainable development, including books, papers and brochures regarding the design and application of indicators. 

Indicators of Sustainability: Indicators in Various Scientific Disciplines
This paper posted by the Alliance for Global Sustainability discusses the meaning of indicators, their functions, and guidelines for their development.

Oregon Progress Board Benchmarks
Information on the indicators that Oregon uses to measure progress by assessing the relationships between the state’s human resources, quality of life, and economy. 

Urban Sustainability Reporting -- Dr.Virginia Maclaren, Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), 
Vol. 62, No. 2, Spring 1996. 
A highly recommended article from the Journal of the American Planning Association which presents "a structured process for urban sustainability reporting that improves upon the ad hoc reporting processes currently in use, and [explores] some of the characteristics of urban sustainability indicators." The article also includes a useful bibliography. Available through libraries or through subscription to JAPA. 

How Green Is the City?: Sustainability Assessment and the Management of Urban Environments
This book, published by Columbia University in 2001 and containing the works of numerous contributors, introduces "sustainability assessment," and deals with practical ways to reach a more sustainable state in urban areas through such tools as strategic environmental assessment, sustainability assessment, direction analysis, baseline setting and progress measurement, sustainability targets, and ecological footprint analysis.

Painting the Town Green - The use of urban sustainability indicators in the United States of America
A 2003 study published by the RICS Foundation that looks at two initiatives, using these case studies to make recommendations aimed at those attempting to monitor their own performance.

Measuring Community Progress -- Dr. Walter H. Corson 
Indicators of Sustainability -- Dr. Walter H. Corson  
Two reports from the former Global Tomorrow Coalition, now re-organized as Applied Sustainability Enterprises. Measuring Community Progress inventories community and state initiatives in the use of sustainability indicators. Indicators of Sustainability reviews a variety of programs and research projects that use indicators to assess quality of life, performance, and sustainability for communities, states, business firms, nations, and the world as a whole. Available from: 
ASE 

Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators, 2nd Edition
Author Maureen Hart provides a comprehensive examination of indicators and their role in the development of sustainable communities. Provides a list of sample indicators as well as a discussion on the characteristics of effective indicators.

Last updated: February 10, 2005

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