Toward a Technique for a More Exhaustive Evaluation of Urban Area Performance

One of the major aspects of urban area performance evaluation that has received little attention to date is that of the exhaustive identification of (exclusive) items to be considered in the evaluation. The object of this paper is to describe a technique useful for making such an identification and to suggest how the many factors that evolve can be culled and eventually utilized in conjuction with certain common evaluation procedures. The technique involves the cross categorization of a set of descriptive characteristics, obtained through a Thesaurus search, with a set of urban area elements, derived by expanding the Ekistics grid. The results obtained are the evaluation factors considered here.