Making Asian Cities Greener: A Tool to Measure Environmental Performance Over Time and a Method to Implement a Green City Action Plan

This paper uses the IHS Green City Conceptual Framework (IHS-GCCF) to present and discuss the development and application of a tool to measure Environmental Performance (EP) over time applied to ten Asian cities and a method using these results to implement a Green City Action Plan (GCAP) applied to the city of Manila. The tool measures EP over time and helps to explain possible factors contributing to the variation of the EPs in the studied time. The GCAP uses the EP results to develop a green city action plan to improve the current EP for a given period. Both tool and method fulfil gaps found in the green city literature, contain innovative approaches, and help cities to measure and plan improvements in their current EP. By applying the EP tool to ten Asian cities in two periods (2007–2009 and 2015–2018), the paper shows that Singapore and Hong Kong had the highest EPs and Bangalore had the lowest. Implementation of water management and climate change strategies are some factors explaining the improvement in Hong Kong’s EP. A strong increase in population size is behind the EP reduction in Bangalore. The Manila GCAP proposes to improve the current EP of the city from 15.43 to 17.41 in twelve years.