Urban areas represent the central point of sustainability initiatives which drive significant changes in cities’ planning, design and management. Given that urban areas are subject to continuous change, efficient and integrated planning and policy strategies are needed to address their complex challenges. This is why the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) plays an essential role in urban planning considering the optimal investment alternatives along with the environmental protection measures. Given that the SEA process considers all impacts on social, economic, institutional and environmental factors, this process must be managed as an adaptive process. Our analysis proposes an evaluation protocol to address sustainability on its economic-environmental-social-institutional dimensions in the evaluation of environmental permits. The evaluation protocol comprised 43 items grouped into three categories (“general presentation”, “sustainability related aspects within the protection measures” and “the strength of the protection measures”). Our analysis, focused on the urban areas from Romania as case study, shows that the environmental permits address sustainability slightly below average. The environmental and institutional dimensions of sustainability achieved the highest scores while those of the economic and social dimensions were quite the opposite. This proved to be helpful in recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of such regulatory documents in terms of their environmental, social, economic and institutional sustainability. Our study contributes to the international literature given that no studies have been elaborated on the evaluation of environmental permits using an evaluation protocol.

城市地区是可持续发展计划的核心，推动城市规划、设计和管理发生重大变化。鉴于城市地区不断变化，需要有效和综合的规划和政策战略来应对其复杂的挑战。这就是为什么战略环境评估 (SEA) 在考虑最佳投资选择和环境保护措施的城市规划中发挥重要作用。鉴于 SEA 过程考虑了对社会、经济、制度和环境因素的所有影响，该过程必须作为一个适应性过程进行管理。我们的分析提出了一个评估协议，以解决环境许可评估中经济-环境-社会-制度维度的可持续性问题。评估方案包括 43 个项目，分为三类（“总体介绍”、“保护措施中的可持续性相关方面”和“保护措施的强度”）。我们的分析以罗马尼亚的城市地区为案例研究，表明环境许可解决的可持续性略低于平均水平。可持续性的环境和制度维度得分最高，而经济和社会维度则恰恰相反。事实证明，这有助于识别此类监管文件在环境、社会、经济和制度可持续性方面的优势和劣势。