A systematic review of guiding principles for sustainable urban neighborhood development

The proportion of urban population is increasing globally. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution are leading to the urgent need to increase sustainable development of and through cities and their components. Encouraging and enabling sustainable lifestyles of urban inhabitants can be fostered by developing sustainable urban neighborhoods as the nuclei of cities. Numerous approaches exist that define principles for guiding sustainable development processes of urban neighborhoods. However, it remains unclear if these approaches really consider the core objectives that should be achieved and key actions that are involved to move toward sustainability. This study represents the first quantitative review that evaluates the principles for sustainable urban neighborhood development based on the available literature. We thus (i) identify promising approaches that present principles close to core criteria for sustainability and (ii) provide starting points for developing a more robust set of principles by bringing together the examined literature. Furthermore (iii), sustainability aspects that are insufficiently covered are highlighted. Based on the findings (iv) a road map is outlined to encourage further research on the elaboration of a sufficient set of principles for sustainable urban neighborhood development.