NSA Screening Tool for Multiple Stakeholders

An urban system can be regarded as a system consisting of smaller building blocks such as neighbourhoods. The sustainability of an urban system is hence closely connected to the sustainability of neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools have multiple potential benefits for urban development such as a holistic evaluation and in some cases quantification of potential economic, social, environmental, and institutional impacts, quality assurance, improved cross-functional teamwork, improved processes etc. Nevertheless there are as yet a reluctance encountered from investors and municipalities in terms of applying NSA tools for developing neighbourhoods due to e.g. cost, complexity. Even a sustainability pre-certification is according to the existing NSA tools comprehensive, time consuming and not necessarily economical rewarding in the short run. Due to these obstacles related with the deployment of NSA tools even at entry level (pre-certification) are jeopardizing sustainable development of urban sub-systems and sustainability is therefore at risk of being neglected in urban development projects.