The focus of this thesis is the development of compact city indicators. The compact city indicators are intended for local Danish authorities that will be able to use the indicators as a tool for planning and monitoring urban compactness. The indicators will furthermore be able to support analysis of the concept of sustainable urban development and urban compactness.
The thesis starts with an introduction of sustainability and compactness, and the relation between the two concepts is discussed. Next The Copenhagen Climate Plan and Copenhagen Municipality Plan are analyzed. This analysis shows that Copenhagen Municipality is planning for urban compactness and urban sustainability has high priority. Furthermore three existing models that assess urban sustainability through various indicators are analyzed. The models are the Dutch DPL-model, the Danish Sustainability Profiles by SBi and The Sustainability Tool by Copenhagen Municipality.
The above mentioned analyses make the basis of a conceptual model of the compact city and its dimensions. Each dimension contains indicators that measure the elements of the compact city. Data from the Danish data base BBR and Copenhagen Municipality’s own data base are used for the indicators. In the development and analysis of the indicators they are tested on four selected residential areas in Copenhagen.
It is concluded that the opportunities of developing useable compact city indicators are many. With the existing data from BBR and local authorities own data bases it is possible to assess urban compactness on a more detailed level than other models have shown before.