Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment: Connecting Impact with Policy Intent

While sustainable urbanization is now widely recognized as integral to achieving global sustainability goals, no one framework for monitoring the sustainability performance of urban areas has been adapted into planning practice by multiple scales of government. This research introduces a new sustainability assessment tool, the Sustainable Communities Rating (SCORE) Tool, under development by the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at Simon Fraser University, which addresses a missing link in assessment tools by evaluating the performance of neighbourhoods that have already been developed, against a six-capital framework through a sustainable community development lens. The SCORE Tool is piloted in the UniverCity neighbourhood in Burnaby, B.C., then it is discussed in detail with a view to how the tool worked in its inaugural application. Finally, a discussion about the strengths and comparability of neighbourhood sustainability assessment systems is structured as a comparative analysis between the SCORE Tool and the Dutch Foundation for Sustainable Area Development FSA Tool.