ABSTRACT

The volume of urban transportation sustainability assessments in academic literature has steadily increased over the last two decades. This paper targets these studies through the first systematic literature review to construct a synthesised and critical overview of how urban transportation sustainability is in fact assessed. The sample consists of 99 peer-reviewed articles retrieved via three scientific search engines. The results reveal a Europe-centric and single-case focus, a strong interest to introduce new indicator systems with limited references to previous work, and a lack of qualitative approaches and stakeholder diversity regarding the assessment methods. Nearly 2400 indicators are identified in the articles with significant variation in their use. Furthermore, the comprehensive accounting for sustainability is often overlooked, and the inconclusive assessment results are often noted by the authors of the sample articles themselves. Our findings signal that the research field is highly fragmented and to some extent fails to accumulate knowledge generated by past studies and to comprehensively operationalise the concept of sustainability. The identified shortcomings of the assessments and their implications for transportation policy-making and planning are highlighted, and based on our results recommendations to develop more reliable, comparable, and inclusive sustainability assessments for the urban transportation sector are made.

摘要

在过去的二十年里，学术文献中城市交通可持续性评估的数量稳步增加。本文通过首次系统性文献综述针对这些研究，以构建关于城市交通可持续性实际上如何评估的综合和批判性概述。该样本包含通过三个科学搜索引擎检索到的 99 篇同行评审文章。结果揭示了以欧洲为中心和单一案例的重点，对引入新指标系统的强烈兴趣，而对先前工作的参考有限，并且在评估方法方面缺乏定性方法和利益相关者的多样性。文章中确定了近 2400 个指标，它们的使用差异很大。此外，对可持续性的综合核算常常被忽视，而不确定的评估结果往往被样本文章的作者自己注意到。我们的研究结果表明，研究领域高度分散，在某种程度上未能积累过去研究产生的知识，也未能全面实施可持续性概念。强调了评估中确定的缺点及​​其对交通政策制定和规划的影响，并根据我们的结果提出了为城市交通部门制定更可靠、可比较和包容性的可持续性评估的建议。我们的研究结果表明，研究领域高度分散，在某种程度上未能积累过去研究产生的知识，也未能全面实施可持续性概念。强调了评估中确定的缺点及​​其对交通政策制定和规划的影响，并根据我们的结果提出了为城市交通部门制定更可靠、可比较和包容性的可持续性评估的建议。我们的研究结果表明，研究领域高度分散，在某种程度上未能积累过去研究产生的知识，也未能全面实施可持续性概念。强调了评估中确定的缺点及​​其对交通政策制定和规划的影响，并根据我们的结果提出了为城市交通部门制定更可靠、可比较和包容性的可持续性评估的建议。