Introduction Cities can be recognized as a fundamental system to promote sustainable development, balancing social, environmental and economic aspects, and developing features of adaptation or resilience. Batty (2008, p.5) defines cities as systems composed by “sets of elements or components tied together through sets of interactions … around land use activities”. In the last years, sustainability criteria and system’s approach have become more relevant in urban development, once the efficiency and the level of services could be enhanced while lowering environmental and social impacts, and related costs. Vol. 8, No. 2, 195-207, https://doi.org/10.12972/susb.20170017 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE Building Technology and Urban Development pISSN 2093-761X ･ eISSN 2093-7628 Comparative assessment of sustainability strategies applied to urban neighbourhoods in Brazil, Germany and Sweden Karin Regina de Castro Marins * University of Sao Paulo, Department of Construction Engineering/ Escola Politecnica, São Paulo (SP), Brazil *Corresponding author: karin.marins@usp.br A B S T R A C T Recently, several researches have shifted the focus on urban sustainability from the city-scale towards the development of neighbourhoods. However, despite the efforts already undertaken, there is still a need to improve methods and tools for integrating sustainability criteria and selecting the most appropriate indicators to the planning of urban areas. This paper discusses strategies and solutions for urban sustainability at the neighbourhood scale, by applying a framework to compare associated indicators of four selected areas: Cidade Pedra Branca (Brazil), Kronsberg, Vauban (Germany), and Hammarby Sjöstad (Sweden). The framework resulted from the analysis, comparison and integration of certain multicriteria parameters and indicators, involving governance, urban form, urban mobility, energy, and economic aspects. The research involved literature review combined to information collected in technical site visits and interviews with stakeholders involved in the urban development in these areas. The framework application allowed to extract the main features which enabled the neighbourhoods to achieve a superior performance, which include: strong governance by the public sector or the building owners to control schedule and quality of urban development projects; application of a multisectoral strategy to enable more suitable urban transport systems; and enhancement of both energy demand and supply sides to achieve a higher overall energy performance and broader use of renewable and local energy systems. Cidade Pedra Branca has shown to face such challenges with more difficulty; Vauban has presented the overall best performance; and Kronsberg and Hammarby Sjöstad are in an intermediate position. Keywords: sustainable neighbourhoods; framework; criteria, indicators; exploratory research Ⓒ International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.