Award-winning paper in 2021

The Reed and Mallik Medal, presented to the best paper published by the Institution in the previous year covering construction aspects of a civil engineering project, was awarded to Martins et al. (2021).

Due to the unsustainable impacts of urbanisation, including the consumption of natural resources and peripheral population density, urban sustainability has the potential to support diverse environmental and social functions in urban environment. Cities need comprehensive plans to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and neighbourhood-level assessment is necessary to ensure the viability of this progress. An indicator-based assessment could suggest a path towards sustainability and, at the same time, encourage the development of assessment tools. To provide arguments for the construction of an evaluation framework, this study investigated the opinions of experts and citizens regarding urban sustainability issues. These opinions served as the basis for a principal component analysis to identify the main sustainability components, covering the synergies between the objectives of four sustainability dimensions. The five components identified included access to amenities, mobility and cultural connectivity; education and urban infrastructure; diversity of use and housing; open spaces and urban drainage. The extracted set identifies potential indicators that support the development of policies, which will promote changes in the Brazilian urban context, benefitting neighbourhood sustainability.