The Application of the Gross City Development Index (GCD-Index) in Islamabad, Pakistan

We apply the Gross City Development Index (GCD-Index) by Ruiz Estrada and Park (2019) in the case of Islamabad, Pakistan. The GCD-Index calculation is based on the concept of city integral sustainable development platform. The platform consists of ten main structures, which are (i) Main Structure-1: Economic and Finance (production and consumption of goods and services, income distribution, savings ratio, public and private investment, inflation, and banking); (ii) Main Structure-2: Social (social protection coverage); (iii) Main Structure-3: Politics and Law, (iv) Main Structure-4: Technological; (v) Main Structure-5: Environment; (vi) Main Structure-6: Population (labor, education and training, immigration and migration, and unemployment); (vii) Main Structure-7: Infrastructure and Housing (real estate prices and transactions); (viii) Main Structure-8: Income and Poverty in formal and informal sectors; (ix) Main Structure-9: Public Sector (public transportation, security, health, welfare programs, and taxation); (x) Main Structure-10: Others (historical, customs, habits, religion, values, and anthropological). The objective of the GCD-Index is to offer policymakers a new analytical tool to assess integral development from a multidimensional perspective. The GCD-Index is a flexible and straightforward indicator that can be applied to analyze the development of any city. We apply the GCD-Index to study the development of Islamabad, Pakistan, between 2000 and 2023 to provide a sense of how the index can be used to assess the progress of integrated and sustainable integral development in a megacity