OPERATIONALIZING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 11 : Utilization of a neighborhood sustainability assessment tool for localizing the sustainable development goals in Swedish municipalities

Sammanfattning: Efforts towards sustainable urban areas are fundamental for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], embodied in goal 11 of sustainable cities and communities. Sustainable urban development requires the goals to be localized and operationalized to the applied areas needs and prerequisites. Localization and operationalization of the goals has, however, proved to be difficult in a local setting. In relation, Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment [NSA] tools are found to provide directives, metrics and indicators of community sustainability assessments, possibly appliable to provide guidance for local governance to operationalize the SDGs. This degree project aims to evaluate the possibility of SDG.11 attainment and policy operationalization at a local level through the use of an established NSA-tool, BREEAM-C. To do so, this degree project use deductive thematic analysis, with SDG.11 targets as analytical framework, to evaluate connectivity to SDG.11 of local policy documents stated to direct efforts of SDG.11 implementation and the selected NSA-tool manual. Further, a composite index of NSA-tool indicators, ranked and adapted to local intentions, is developed through an analytical hierarchy process. Overall strong connections, though variable, to SDG.11 are found for both municipal and NSA-tool intentions of urban development as well as between municipal and NSA-tool intentions. The proposed composite index for SDG.11 implementation is deemed to adequately answer to municipal intentions of SDG.11 implementation.