Because of its computational simplicity, Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) has been extensively
deployed for assessing the sustainability of various environmental systems. In general, EFA aims at
capturing the impacts of human activity on the environment by computing the amount of bioproductive
land that can support population consumption and the concomitant generation of waste in any given area.
Herein, we deploy EFA for assessing the sustainability of an urban system, specifically, the Chicago
Metropolitan Area (CMA). We estimate the trend in EF for the CMA between 1990 and 2015 to determine
if the metropolitan area is moving towards or away from sustainable development. At the outset of the
estimation, we consider six categories of bioproductive land for the analysis, namely, energy, arable,
forest, pasture, and built-up lands as well as lake area. In addition, we allocate the various items consumed
and/or produced by the area’s population to one of these categories. Subsequently, we computed the
CMA’s ecological demand, or footprint, by quantifying the amount per capita of each land/space category
required to sustain the consumption of the area’s population. Moreover, we determined the CMA’s
ecological supply by accounting for the amount per capita of each land/space category that the area is
providing to the environment. Finally, the ecological balance is computed by subtracting the area’s
footprint from the corresponding ecological supply. We expect that the results of this analysis will serve
as a basis for the establishment of a refined computational framework for the city’s Ecological Footprint
that might guide policy-making regarding the sustainability of the CMA in the future.
• Food, energy, water, and nutrient material flows and footprints , • Sustainable urban systems
