SPARTACUS System for Analyzing Urban Sustainability

SPARTACUS (System for Planning and Research in Towns and Cities for Urban Sustainability) is a strategic urban planning system based on a state-of-the-art land use/transport model (MEPLAN) combined with a set of urban sustainability indicators, the geographic information system–based Raster method to calculate values for some of the indicators, the MEPLUS database and presentation module, as well as the decision-support tool USE-IT. The USE-IT system is used for evaluating the results of policy options based on weighted indicator values representing social, environmental, and economic effects of the policies. The SPARTACUS system has been used for assessing policy options in a systematic way in three cities: Helsinki, Bilbao, and Naples. More than 30 policy elements (i.e., individual policy measures) have been analyzed. The policy elements represent different pricing, regulatory, land use, transport planning, and investment measures. Based on the results, policies and policy combinations comprising several promising policy elements have been defined and analyzed. The results show that the level of sustainability can be increased in the test cities in a cost-effective way by using a variety of policies, especially pricing and regulatory policies and their combinations. Negative side effects of individual policies can be mitigated by combining policies, and innovative policy combinations can be found. Recommendations for sustainable urban policies and future research are given, based on the above studies.