ABSTRACT
Interventions in urban areas causing changes in the urban metabolism, directly influence living environments of the population, including the environmental and economic aspects of living conditions. The concept of sustainability applied to urban contexts requires the consideration of quite complex interrelations and of a great variety of aspects. Environmental and socio-economic data was gathered for scoring different grades of sustainability of urban planning proposals. Sustainability represents a goal rather than an achievement to be defined and measured in absolute terms. Some of the socio-economic indicators included in the BRIDGE DSS have been designed as 'placeholders' to be filled, for every new application of the DSS, with locally significant indicators to be determined in discussions with stakeholders in the specific local contexts. The incorporation and use of socio-economic indicators during the assessments was highly constrained by the lack of modelling tools for simulating socio-economic variables as well as the lack of readily available data.
