Ideally, a sustainable city creates an enduring way of life across the four domains of ecology, economics, politics and culture. However, minimally a sustainable city should firstly be able to feed itself with a sustainable reliance on the surrounding countryside.

Secondly, it should be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy. The crux of this is to create the smallest possible ecological footprint, and to produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible, to efficiently use land; compost used materials, recycle it or convert waste-to-energy, and thus the city's overall contribution to climate change will be minimal, if such practices are adhered to.

Humans are social creatures and thrive in urban spaces that foster social connections. Because of this, a shift to more dense, urban living would provide an outlet for social interaction and conditions under which humans can prosper.

Contrary to common belief, urban systems can be more environmentally sustainable than rural or suburban living. With people and resource located so close to one another it is possible to save energy for transportation and mass transit systems, and resources such as food. Finally, cities benefit the economy by locating human capital in one relatively small geographic area where ideas can be generated.

http://www.oneplaneteconomynetwork.org/resources/programme-documents/WP8_Integrating_Ecological_Carbon_Water_Footprint.pdf

http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Galli-et-al-2012.pdf

Dear Baresi,

You can use various standards provided by organization like ISO, 14064, WBCSD's GHG protocol,  Green Design Institute etc. to measure GHG emissions or carbon footprint. 

For water and ecological footprint you can use EEIO, LCA, Hybrid LCA modeling.

Please check software like:

http://www.umberto.de/en/

Regards,

Vikrant

Try Emergy analysis, as the holistic method to give an answer to your question, since this method takes into account renewable, non-renewable, economic, environmental and social inputs to calculate the emergy indices of competitiveness (EYR : Emergy Yield ratio), environmental impact (ELR : Environmental Loading Ratio), sustainability (EIS : Emergy Index of Sustainability) and eco-productivity (EPI : Emergy Productivity Index)  Related Refs : Martzopoulou, A. 2013. Energy and environmental management on industrial concentrations. PhD thesis. Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece., Odum, H.T. 2000. Folio #2. Emergy of global process. Handbook of emergy evaluation. A compendioum of data for emergy computation. Gainsville. FL USA: Center for Environmental Policy. University of Florida., Geng, Y., Côté, R. P. 2002. Scavengers and decomposers in an eco‐industrial park. The International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 9(4): 333‐340., Geng, Y., Zhang, P., Ulgiati, S., Sarkis, J. (2010). Emergy analysis of an industrial park: The case of Dalian, China. Science of the Total Environment 408, 5273-5283.,   Hammond, G. (2007). Emergy and sustainability in a complex world: Reflections on the ideas of Howard T. Odum. International Journal of Energy Research 31, 1105-1130.

Dear Umberto,

Direct answer to this question would be No.

Footprints could only emerge as a result of planning. Appropriate planning !

If we superimpose given (prescribed) footprints for different categories (water, energy,...) we will discover non-compatibility, even contradictions. Hence, analytic planning, including integrated optimization processes, is the answer.

 Certainly... this is becoming common practice.

Check attached.

Dear Umberto,

You could follow life cycle inventory (LCA standard - ISO 14044) based approach for accounting. You could also follow PEF.

If you would like to address conceptually, please see the link below

http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:736415/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Sincerely

Rajib

I would like to thank you all for your thorough and extremely useful answers.

I try summarizing the different positions of these contributions; please correct me if I get something wrong.

I see there is a wide range of approaches to the issue. Some seem closer to the production of goods and the related consumption of resources (Wuppertal Institute). About this, some protocols and modelling tools (e.g. ISO, LCA) could and should be used to drive experimental applications in different contexts.

Some others support the development of new approaches to the measurement of sustainability, basing on specific paradigms (Emergy approach). These approaches are alternatives to the ones focused either on single forms of footprints or on their integration. About this, the integration between many footprints seems to be an undergoing process fostered (among the others) by the European Union (this seems considering the paper by Galli et al. I look forward to see if this approach will be utilised by the European Commission in any way, to support the re-design of SEA in the EU).

In the end, it seems that many approaches are nourishing around the concept of 'footprint', though many critics are moved both to 1) the structure of the sustainability indicators behind ‘footprints’ computation, and 2) to the way these indicators are calculated.

In the end, what I wonder is ‘how’ these tools (footprint indicators) could find better and more efficacious application ‘in the real world’. In other words, what happens when ‘footprints’ meet ‘governance’, on the field of urban and regional planning?

Thank you again for your support.

All the best,

Umberto

Urban planners of today are faced with unprecedented growth in urban populations, major global events, e.g. urbanization, globalization, climate change and ecosystem degradation, that directly and indirectly impact on urban planning at the local level. At the local level, in addition to the more traditional issues of concern, the issues of urban fringe zones, urban ecosystems and urban climate change impacts arguably need to be given more consideration in urban planning.

Environmental Challenges to Urban Planning: Fringe areas, Ecological Foot

prints and Climate Change http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/resources/seminars/Urbanization_Seminar/HCMC_Workshop/Papers_and_Presentations/Allen_Clark__HCMC_Works...

Please check out the GPC - Greenhouse Gas Protocol for community based GHG accounting and reporting.

http://ghgprotocol.org/files/ghgp/GHGP_GPC.pdf

For spatial information on water risk you may find the following site helpful:

http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/aqueduct