ABSTRACT
. This chapter describes a project conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme (UNGCCP) and the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University. The approach has been developed in close consultation with Caroline Bayliss and Stephanie McCarthy. In the present context of global climate change, intensifying urbanization, increasing transnational insecurities, and a heightening divide of rich and poor, there is a pressing need for new ways of working towards local and global sustainability. Sustainability indicators are in the first instance simply a means for assessing the 'distance' between a current state of affairs and the ongoing task of achieving a sustainable way of life in the context of a given city, institutional or community setting. The indicators or metrics of sustainability in the Economic Domain might include some of the Global Reporting initiative indicators, but they would need to be rewritten in significant ways to make them relevant to other bodies than just corporations
