Sustainable urban development assessment: Large cities in Kazakhstan

Measuring the comparative level of urban sustainability is an important part of creating a sustainable urban future. This article assesses the sustainable development of the seventeen largest cities in Kazakhstan for 2007–2019 using a geodatabase on a GIS platform. The results show that none of the cities have reached a level of sustainability greater than or equal to a sustainable urban development index (SUDI) of 0.750, and no cities have an unsustainable level of development with a SUDI below 0.300. Therefore, all seventeen cities are classified as moderately sustainable. In future studies, the authors will look for ways to further improve the system for assessing the sustainability of cities in Kazakhstan.