From Community to City: Challenges and Research Progress in Cross-Scale Sustainability Assessment

Global urbanization is accelerating in the 21st century, and the United Nations projects that the urban population will reach 6.5 billion by 2050, positioning cities as the primary arena for implementing SDG 11. However, existing research on urban sustainability assessment remains largely confined to either the city or community scales, exhibiting considerable fragmentation, and neglecting dynamic cross-scale interactions leads to policy mismatches. This study conducts a systematic review of literature published between 2015 and 2025 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, following the PRISMA guidelines. After excluding single-scale and non-urban studies, 14 core papers were identified. The results reveal three dominant pathways for cross-scale city–community assessment: top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches. Methods predominantly involve computational modeling and spatial analysis (GIS), indicating a trend toward methodological integration. Indicators commonly demonstrate cross-dimensional coupling and cross-scale nesting structures. However, persistent challenges remain, including data barriers, insufficient coverage of sociocultural dimensions, and high technical thresholds. Future efforts should prioritize enhancing data integration, refining multidimensional indicator frameworks, and reducing application barriers to advance cross-scale assessment and achieve the coordinated, sustainable development of cities and communities.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Sustainable Development Research

• Publication date

  2025-11-17

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.30560/sdr.v7n4p57
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Urban systems science and cross-scale dynamics: A conceptual framework to advance integrated planning and governance

  2025cited by this paper
• Urban Form and Sustainable Neighborhood Regeneration—A Multiscale Study of Daegu, South Korea

  2025cited by this paper
• Predicting Urban Vitality at Regional Scales: A Deep Learning Approach to Modelling Population Density and Pedestrian Flows

  2025cited by this paper
• Sustainable Cities and Communities in EU Member States: A Multi-Criteria Analysis

  2024cited by this paper
• A Multi-Scale Evaluation Model of Sustainable Development Goal 11.7 for Problem-Solving at Different Levels

  2024influential reference
• Proposing a composite index and maturity model for urban sustainability in the Brazilian context: A machine learning and data envelopment analysis approach

  2024cited by this paper
• Multidisciplinary Evaluation of Vulnerabilities: Communities in Northern Mexico

  2023cited by this paper
• Cross‐scale, cross‐level and multi‐actor governance of transformations toward the Sustainable Development Goals: A review of common challenges and solutions

  2023influential reference
• Urban neighbourhood classification and multi-scale heterogeneity analysis of Greater London

  2022cited by this paper
• Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment Tools: Research Trends and Forecast for the Built Environment

  2022cited by this paper
• Multi-scale governance and data for sustainable development

  2022cited by this paper
• A review and catalogue to the use of models in enabling the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDG)

  2022cited by this paper
• Towards sustainable cities: A sustainability assessment study for metropolitan cities in Turkey via a hybridized IT2F-AHP and COPRAS approach

  2021cited by this paper
• An integrated, multi-scale approach for modelling urban metabolism changes as a means for assessing urban sustainability

  2021cited by this paper
• A multi-scale integrated assessment model to support urban sustainability

  2021cited by this paper
• A data-driven approach for multi-scale GIS-based building energy modeling for analysis, planning and support decision making

  2020cited by this paper
• From digital to sustainable: A scientometric review of smart city literature between 1990 and 2019

  2020cited by this paper
• A human-centred assessment framework to prioritise heat mitigation efforts for active travel at city scale.

  2020cited by this paper
• Promoting Social Sustainability of Urban Neighbourhoods : The Case of Bethnal Green, London

  2020cited by this paper
• Toward a Framework for Resilience Assessments: Working Across Cultures, Disciplines, and Scales in Aotearoa/New Zealand

  2020cited by this paper
• Urban sustainability assessment tools: A review

  2019cited by this paper
• A tiered, system-of-systems modeling framework for resolving complex socio-environmental policy issues

  2019cited by this paper
• Sustainability and resilience for transformation in the urban century

  2019cited by this paper
• SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

  2019influential reference
• A multi-scale examination of public discourse on energy sustainability in Italy: Empirical evidence and policy implications

  2018cited by this paper
• Building a global urban science

  2018cited by this paper
• A cross-scale impact assessment of European nature protection policies under contrasting future socio-economic pathways

  2018cited by this paper
• Characterisation of sustainability in urban areas: An analysis of assessment tools with emphasis on European cities

  2018cited by this paper
• Scales of integration for sustainable development governance

  2018cited by this paper
• A GIS-based framework to identify priority areas for urban environmental inequity mitigation and its application in Santiago de Chile

  2018cited by this paper
• Future urban research

  2018cited by this paper
• Heterogeneity and scale of sustainable development in cities

  2017cited by this paper
• Transforming our world : The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

  2016influential reference
• Defining and advancing a systems approach for sustainable cities

  2016cited by this paper
• Viability of using global standards for neighbourhood sustainability assessment: insights from a comparative case study

  2015cited by this paper
• Defining and measuring urban sustainability: a review of indicators

  2015cited by this paper
• Quality of urban patterns: Spatially explicit evidence for multiple scales

  2015cited by this paper
• Towards prosperous sustainable cities: A multiscalar urban sustainability assessment approach

  2015cited by this paper
• Integrated assessment and modelling: Overview and synthesis of salient dimensions

  2015cited by this paper
• A critical review of seven selected neighborhood sustainability assessment tools

  2013cited by this paper
• Sustainability assessment of urban communities through rating systems

  2013cited by this paper
• Assessing cities: a new system of cross-scale spatial indicators

  2012cited by this paper
• Local Perspectives on HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program

  2011cited by this paper
• The market and the plan: Housing, urban renewal and socio-economic change in London

  2010cited by this paper
• Measurement indicators and an evaluation approach for assessing urban sustainable development: A case study for China's Jining City

  2009cited by this paper
• SUSTAINABILITY INDEX FOR TAIPEI

  2007cited by this paper
• Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on Scale and Cross-scale Dynamics Scale and Cross-Scale Dynamics: Governance and Information in a Multilevel World

  2006influential reference
• The concept of scale and the human dimensions of global change: a survey

  2000cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.