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Summary. This paper outlines a framework for assessing the environmental performance of cities in regard to the meeting of sustainable development goals. It also considers how the environmental goals fit with the social, economic and political goals of sustainable development and the kinds of national framework and international context needed to encourage city-based consumers, enterprises and governments to progress towards their achievement. In a final section, it considers the extent to which the recommendations of the Habitat II Conference helped to encourage national governments and city and municipal authorities in this direction.
Introduction
The past ten years have brought examples of considerable innovation among city and municipal authorities in most parts of the world in regard to sustainable development. In Europe and North America, many cities have put in place long-term programmes to improve their environment, reduce resource use and reduce waste (Mega, 1996a; UNCHS, 1996; European Commission, 1994). A growing number of cities have local authorities who have committed themselves to sustainable development goals-as in the European Campaign of Sustainable Cities and Towns-and have shown a greater willingness to share knowledge and experiences with other city authorities (Mega, 1996a; UNCHS, 1996). Certain cities in Latin America have also put in place long-term programmes to address environmental problems-for example, Curitiba in Brazil (Rabinovitch, 1992) and Ilo in Peru (Diaz et al., 1996)-while in many cities in all regions of the world, there has been considerable innovation by city authorities in addressing environmental problems. There is also a worldwide movement of `Healthy cities' in which local authorities in more than 1000 cities have sought new ways to work with the many different actors and interests within their boundaries in the promotion of health and prevention of disease (WHO, 1996).
The discussion of sustainable development in regard to cities has also gained greater official recognition. For instance, the terms `sustainable cities' and `sustainable human settlements' were much in evidence at Habitat II, the second UN Conference on Human Settlements (also known as the City Summit) held in Istanbul in June 1996. Despite the disagreements between the different groups represented at the Conference-for instance, between the European Union, the Group of 77 and the US-all government delegations appeared to support the idea of `sustainable human settlements' or...