Integrating urban ecosystem sustainability assessment into policy making: insights from the Gold Coast City
This paper introduces a policy making support tool called 'Micro level Urban ecosystem Sustainability IndeX (MUSIX) The index serves as a sustainability assessment model that monitors six aspects of urban ecosystems hydrology, ecology, pollution, location, design, and efficiency based on parcel scale indicators. This index is applied in a case study investigation in the Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia. The outcomes reveal that there are major environmental problems caused by increased impervious surfaces from growing urban development in the study area. The findings suggest that increased impervious surfaces are linked to increased surface runoff, car dependency, transport related pollution, poor public transport accessibility, and unsustainable built environment. This paper presents how the MUSIX outputs can be used to guide policy making through the evaluation of existing policies.