Toward a sustainable development indicators system for small municipalities

Abstract

Abstract This study proposes a system of sustainability indicators to support the management of small municipalities. We rely on the Sustainable Cities Program indicators, but we argue that these measures must be appropriate for these types of municipalities to help them be more sustainable. Thus, we carried out a selection of indicators using a four‐stage methodology. First, the Delphi technique was applied in two rounds of validation with specialists. Then, in the second phase, 64 indicators were evaluated by 19 mayors of cities in southern Brazil. The subset of sustainability indicators generated is called Sustainability Indicators for Small Municipalities. It has six guiding axes, namely: nature and social well‐being, sustainable public management, historical and cultural management, sustainability education, new savings for sustainability, and urban planning and accessibility. Third, we use the fuzzy expert system to determine a decision tree and, consequently, create a general index for a pilot municipality. The generated index corresponds to 7.19, which demonstrates that the pilot municipality falls into an intermediate level of sustainability; this application in an example that the sample was the last (fourth) step. Therefore, this study generates insights to: (a) promote sustainability by contemplating its multidimensionality; (b) promotion of local development and quality of life for the population based on sustainability indicators; (c) development of a management method to measure sustainability performance, considering the specificities of small municipalities; and (d) sustainability parameters that are measured and allow the establishment of indicators to improve the performance of public management, aiming at local sustainable development.

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