City Assessment Tool to Measure the Impact of Public Policies on Smart and Sustainable Cities. The Case Study of the Municipality of Alcobendas (Spain) Compared with Similar European Cities

Data analytics is a key resource to analyze cities and to find their strengths and weaknesses to define long-term sustainable strategies. On the one hand, urban planning is geared to adapting cities’ strategies towards a qualitative, intelligent, and sustainable growth. On the other hand, institutions are geared towards open governance and collaborative administration models. In this context, sustainability has become a global concern for urban development, and the sustainable development goals (SDGs), defined by United Nations, are the framework to be followed to define the new city goals and to measure the advances of the policies implemented over recent years. The main objective of this research is to explain the methods and results of the application of a city assessment tool for measuring the impact of public policies on the socioeconomic and environmental structure of a city. It addresses the case study of the evaluation of the strategic plan “Disena 2020” of the municipality of Alcobendas (Madrid, Spain, with 116.037 inhabitants), the document used to communicate the actions needed to achieve the city goals during the planning exercise. A selection of urban indicators has been aligned with the SDGs defined in the Agenda 2030 to develop a tool for the measurement of the impacts of policies in economic, social, and ecological terms. Through this set of indicators, the tool is able to quantify the impact of the policies on the city and the SDGs and to support the decision-making processes of the administration. The set of urban indicators is divided into five areas: economic development and employment, sustainable development, open government, social responsibility, and quality of life. The data evolution, across the recent years 2012–2018, is used to monitor and benchmark the effects of the applied policies. In addition, Alcobendas can be compared with other Spanish and European cities with similar characteristics; it makes possible assessing the achievement of the city’s strategic areas, incorporating the current trends and fostering the SDGs. Thanks to the quantitative comparable results and the objective approach, this research shows a methodology based on indicators that could be applied and scaled to other cities to generate a common framework for measuring the impact of public policies on cities.