The Role of Strategic Environmental Assessment as a Guide to Achieving Assessment Criteria for Sustainable Development in Cities

Sustainable urban development is crucial, and it can be identified if the world's resources will continue to be used more intensively or if environmental planning and design criteria can be incorporated into the planning process to create a more sustainable path. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) contributes to early environmental preservation by including the environmental dimension into strategies, plans, and development initiatives. In order to create new sustainable cities, it also aids in the application of sustainable development concepts. When the SEA process is put into practice, cities can actually achieve sustainable growth. The research aims to incorporate the idea of SEA as a guide to initiate sustainable development in urban areas by triggering mechanisms that align with each stage of the city's growth. Any new city planning can adhere to evaluation requirements that incorporate sustainable development processes. It is also possible to evaluate the extent to which existing cities achieve sustainable development standards or not, to determine what mechanisms they lack to become sustainable cities. The case of Cape Town, South Africa, is studied and the proposed assessment criteria are applied to it to determine the extent to which it achieves the mechanisms and the extent of its shortcomings.