Asian megacities are growing incessantly – and often ignoring official planning. Therefore, Agenda 21 an environmental-political action program was decided on at the "Rio Converence" in 1992. In the follow-up, local catalogues of sustainability indicators have been developed to be used for assessing urban development.
Sabrina Krank studied at the Chair for Sustainable Construction at the ETH Zurich, which was made possible by the Holcim Foundation in 2004. Her dissertation is the first to be finished at this new chair. In her study she investigates 16 of the catalogues of indicators in five Asian megacities. In 2008 she visited Bangkok, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jakarta, and Shanghai and conducted 50 explorative interviews with government representatives, urban researchers, city planners, and representatives of NGOs.
Her analysis of these conversations shows that the lack of implementation of sustainability indicators can be chiefly ascribed to user-based factors, to a lack of political will and insufficient financial resources. From her findings, she developed a new blueprint for successful indicator program planning. Her findings are published in English, and copies have been given to the cities she studied.