UNDP’s second flagship report on sustainable urban development has established models and methods for the evaluation of urban sustainable development based on the China Sustainable Cities Index, a quantitative and objective evaluation system to assist cities in assessing their sustainability performance based on UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), which has been applied to countries world-wide since 1990. Here it has been deployed at city level alongside the Urban Ecological Input Index (UEII), which measures resource consumption and pollution discharge.

The Report evaluates 35 cities and categorizes them into 4 quadrants: high human development, low ecological input (sustainable); high human development, high ecological input (less sustainable); low human development, low ecological input (less sustainable); low human development, high ecological input (unsustainable). Additionally, the report gives recommendations for development paths for cities depending on their current development stage, whether they need to improve human development, decrease ecological input, or both.