1. Policy Indicators

The policy indicators for the 1000 Cities Challenge assess the presence and quality of a wide range of urban and transport policies that contribute to creating healthy and sustainable urban environments.

To generate the policy indicators for your city

1. Download and review the 1000 Cities Challenge policy checklist tool.

• The policy checklist includes an Instructions tab, which details the steps involved in collecting relevant policy details for your city.
• Watch this video for more information:

2. Develop a policy data collection plan.

• Identify who will collect the data.

• Identify the relevant level(s) of government for your analysis:

  • The checklist can be applied to any jurisdiction (e.g. local, metropolitan, regional government), as relevant to your city. However, the Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities aims to include the whole metropolitan area of cities, wherever possible.
  • If multiple levels of government are relevant for your city, include policies for all relevant levels of government in the same checklist.

• Identify the relevant government sectors and institutions for urban and transport policies in your country and city.

3. Search government websites, and policy repositories, and/or seek advice from policymakers to identify and retrieve relevant urban and transport policy/legislative documents for analysis.

4. Assessed the retrieved policy documents using the checklist.

5. Get your completed policy checklist checked and validated by emailing it to the 1000 Cities Challenge team: [email protected]

6. Use the Global Healthy and Sustainable City Indicators tool and directions to generate:

• A summary PDF
• Policy Indicators Report
• Combined Policy and Spatial Indicators Report (if also generating spatial indicators).

Figure 12. Select and load a completed policy indicator checklist

Figure 13. Query a completed policy checklist for key phrases, and generate a summary PDF document

7. Have an infographic Scorecard created for your city, by emailing [email protected].

8. The Scorecard and Reports can be added to the Global Observatory website.

You can have access to the full policy training session via:

For further assistance

Access our Frequently Asked Questions

For more information on the concepts underlying the policy checklist tool, read:

Lowe, M., Adlakha D., et al. (2022). City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities. The Lancet Global Health, May 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00069-9.

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