Urban indicators and plan to improve urban sustainability: The case of Sao Paulo City

Sustainable city is a city with characteristics that allow the improvement of population´s quality of life without destroying the natural resources available on it. Improve sustainability should be the goal of every government in charge of a city. The first step a public administrator should do is to define areas to focus on. Then, he should select indicators to measure the urban conditions and evaluate some aspects of the city. This work has the objective to discuss the concepts of urban indicators for sustainable cities and conduct a case study for the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, analyzing its actual situation in terms of urbanization and the impact son the city environmental conditions. The city has geographically grown indiscriminately in the last years, with low investments in public transportation. The fleet of cars increased a lot, causing congestion in its streets. With more cars on the streets, the air quality of the city remains not good, away from international acceptable standards. We are going to propose measures to improve the city sustainability, through investments in its urban infrastructure, especially transportation. The conclusions show that the disordered growth of the city is related to the worsening of its sustainable situation.