Currently, Cambodia does not have sustainable city indicators, and green and clean city indicators are also limited compared to UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) indicators. Therefore, this research aims to develop sustainable city indicators for Cambodia and to address the questions "Are the green and clean city indicators limited in terms of sustainability?" and "Are the UN SDG 11 indicators suitable for Cambodia?" Delphi processes of panel surveys were conducted to develop the indicators in Round 1, pre-validate the indicators in Round 2, and validate the indicators in Round 3. The results showed that 69 initial indicators were obtained from Round 1; 41 pre-validated indicators were obtained from Round 2; and finally, 32 validated indicators were obtained from Round 3. All of the 32 indicators reached consensus. Based on the consensus indicators, the green and clean city indicators were found to be limited in terms of sustainability, and the UN SDG 11 has nine indicators suitable for Cambodia. These findings could be useful for applying the UN SDG 11 indicators to Cambodia and transforming the green and clean city indicators to sustainable city indicators. The 32 consensus indicators could be used as alternative sustainable city indicators for Cambodia.Sustainability 2019, 11, 3166 2 of 32 planning methodology document that "The development of green and sustainable cities in Cambodia is a key policy priority for the NCSD" [9] (p. iv). Furthermore, the government through its NCSD is currently developing the Code for Environment and Natural Resources. One chapter of the Code titled Sustainable Cities (Chapter 4) [10] is specifically to deal with the UN SDG 11 "Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable" [11][12][13][14]. Moreover, Cambodia launched the clean city standard in order to improve urban quality and development by monitoring and evaluating cities through a clean city contest every three years [15], as well as the green city development program. The goal is to develop cities to be clean, green, and competitive while offering a safe and quality lifestyle to its residents [9,16,17].Based on the above reviewed sustainable city governance and development progress, Cambodia currently does not have indicators to monitor and assess the development of sustainable cities yet. Therefore, this research firstly aims to develop sustainable city indicators for Cambodia. The concept of sustainable development comprises three dimensions: Economic, social, and environmental [18][19][20][21][22]. The development must integrate the overlapping intersections of these dimensions, such as equitable (interaction between the economic and social dimension), liveable (correspondence of the environment to social needs), and viable [23-26] (economic development must abide by the supportive capacity of the ecosystems, and depletion of non-renewable resources must be avoided) [23] (p. 407). In this sense, sustainable city indicators need to be reached not only in terms of environmental di...
The world is rapidly urbanizing which 68% of its population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Likewise, secondary cities of Cambodia are rapidly emerging while the capital is the largest city with a population of more than two million. Improving urban sustainability is, therefore, necessary for the world, as well as Cambodia. Thus, Cambodia has launched clean city standard indicators, proposed sectoral green city indicators, and adapted one target of global sustainable development goal 11 (UN SDG 11), to improve its urban quality and sustainability. However, using these indicators is not sufficient towards achieving urban sustainability because these indicators are limited in social and economic dimensions. Hence, this study aims to develop all dimensional indicators of sustainability based on all targets of UN SDG 11 with the above indicators. This study focused on the priorities of indicators in Cambodia verified and prioritized by Delphi and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques. Then, a priority-based urban sustainability index for Cambodia was formed based on the concept of sustainability in developing countries. Finally, the standard scores were applied to comparatively assess the sustainability of capital and emerging secondary cities of Cambodia based on the 2018 Commune Database. Through this application, the study also sought to find out whether the priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment. The results showed that the sustainability levels of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville were found to be strong in all environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Battambang is also strong although economic sustainability is slightly lower than the average. Siem Reap is low in economic sustainability level while Poi Pet is remarkably low in environmental and social sustainability. Furthermore, the ranks of sustainability levels of the five cities based on weighted scores are different from their ranks based on unweighted scores. Therefore, this study confirms that priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment towards improving the accuracy of the comparison.
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