Measuring the sustainability of neighborhoods: A systematic literature review

Neighborhoods have received worldwide interest in sustainability assessment due to their suitable scale for representing the relationship between the individual and the city. Consequently, this has led to a focus on developing neighborhood sustainability assessment (NSA) systems and, thereby, studying the prominent NSA tools. Alternatively, this study aims to uncover formative concepts shaping the assessment of sustainable neighborhoods based on a systematic review of the empirical work by researchers. The study included a Scopus database search for papers measuring neighborhood sustainability and a literature review of 64 journal articles published between 2019 and 2021. Our results suggest that criteria related to sustainable form and morphology are the most widely measured criteria in the reviewed papers, interconnected with multiple aspects of neighborhood sustainability. The paper contributes to expanding the existing knowledge on neighborhood sustainability evaluation, further adding to the literature on designing sustainable cities and communities and achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11.