Evaluation of Sustainable Urban District Developments : The case of Stockholm Royal Seaport

Sammanfattning: Urban sustainable development is now seen as one of the keys in the quest for a sustainable world and increased interest in developing sustainable urban districts has become an important feature of urban sustainability. However, if cities and their districts are to be part of this transition, it will be necessary to determine the state and progress of urban developments. Evaluation and follow-up activities must therefore be an integral part of modern sustainability work.This thesis investigated evaluation methods and strategies for determining progress towards sustainable urban district development. The Stockholm Royal Seaport district in Sweden was used as the research arena in studies based on urban metabolism theories, including a single case study approach, focus group interviews, the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development and quantitative data analysis. The thesis main results can be summarised as follows.A structured frame for use in theory and practice can strengthen programme development and minimise the risk of built-in problems in environmental and sustainability plans for new urban districts. The proposed evaluation model for Stockholm Royal Seaport displayed strengths regarding core evaluation activities, such as communicating a strong vision and recognising continuity in the evaluation process. It displayed weaknesses as regards organisational structure and system boundaries. The proof-of-concept implementation of a Smart Urban Metabolism framework enabled real-time evaluation data on district scale to be generated and processed. The implementation process also led to identification of limitations in the framework, such as access to business sensitive data, failed integration of data streams and privacy concerns. Dynamic, high-resolution meter data can provide a higher degree of transparency in evaluation results and permit inclusion of all stakeholder groups in urban districts. The frequently used energy performance indicator kWh/m2 (Atemp) was shown to be an insufficient communication tool to mediate knowledge, due to conflation of consumption and construction parameters and the need for prior knowledge for full understanding.