Which topics does the indicator set cover?

It follows the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations at municipal level and therefore reaches well beyond environmental topics: land use and nature protection, air and water, energy and electric mobility, poverty and social situation, education, health, housing and rents, employment and participation as well as municipal finances.

How do I narrow the time series to specific years?

Through the parameters from and to, both as a year. This shrinks the response considerably: Cologne unfiltered is around 82 kilobytes, with from=2023 and to=2023 around 24 kilobytes. Invalid years return 400, and the most recent year and value always refer to the most recent point inside the selected window.

Are these the official SDG figures of the city itself?

No. The indicators come from Wegweiser Kommune of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which derives them from official statistics uniformly for all municipalities. That is exactly why cities are comparable with each other. Every indicator carries its attribution and its explanation, so the origin of each value stays traceable.

Why does my city return fewer indicators than another one?

Because part of the measures is only collected at district level. For cities inside a district those indicators are missing rather than filled in with the district value. The response carries the number of indicators actually present, and cities without an ingested set report that openly as a status instead of inventing a value.

Sustainability API for German cities (SDG indicators)

Name: Municipal sustainability and SDG indicators per German city
Creator: InfraNode
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

How sustainable a city is does not come down to a single number but to a whole set of measures: land consumption, child poverty, charging points, protected areas, drinking water use. This API returns up to 53 municipal sustainability indicators per city as a time series from 2006 to 2023, key-free and with the year attached to every value.

What data you get

Per city the endpoint returns a set of indicators, each with a stable key, a label, a unit, the attribution of the statistical office and an explanation of how to read the value. Each indicator also carries its full yearly series of year and value plus the most recent year with its value. At response level you get the number of indicators, the covered year range, the official municipality key and the Wikidata ID. The parameters from and to narrow the series down to a year window.

Indicator key and label
Unit of the indicator
Attribution per indicator
Explanation of how to read it
Most recent year and value
Yearly series of year and value
Number of indicators
Covered year range
Official municipality key (AGS)
Wikidata ID of the city

Source: Wegweiser Kommune, Bertelsmann Stiftung. License: CC0 1.0. Source, license URL and timestamp are included in every API response in the meta and attribution block.

How to fetch it

A simple GET request, no key and no sign-up:

curl https://infranode.dev/api/v1/cities/koeln/sustainability

For another city, just put the slug from the cities list into the path.

No key, no sign-up, free.

Open quickstart Endpoint reference

Covered cities

All cities in the register return data. The scope differs: district-free cities reach up to 53 indicators, cities inside a district fewer, because part of the measures is only collected at district level. Measured live: Cologne and Munich 53, Berlin 52, Hamburg 51, Hanover 44, Aachen 43.

Available for all 84 covered cities. The exact per-city status is on the coverage and status page, the full list of cities on the cities overview.

Straight to the largest covered cities: Berlin , Hamburg , München , Köln , Frankfurt am Main , Stuttgart , Düsseldorf , Leipzig , Dortmund , Essen .

Endpoint reference

All parameters, fields and response examples are in the API reference for this endpoint. InfraNode is also available as an MCP server for AI assistants.

Frequently asked questions

Which topics does the indicator set cover?: It follows the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations at municipal level and therefore reaches well beyond environmental topics: land use and nature protection, air and water, energy and electric mobility, poverty and social situation, education, health, housing and rents, employment and participation as well as municipal finances.
How do I narrow the time series to specific years?: Through the parameters from and to, both as a year. This shrinks the response considerably: Cologne unfiltered is around 82 kilobytes, with from=2023 and to=2023 around 24 kilobytes. Invalid years return 400, and the most recent year and value always refer to the most recent point inside the selected window.
Are these the official SDG figures of the city itself?: No. The indicators come from Wegweiser Kommune of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which derives them from official statistics uniformly for all municipalities. That is exactly why cities are comparable with each other. Every indicator carries its attribution and its explanation, so the origin of each value stays traceable.
Why does my city return fewer indicators than another one?: Because part of the measures is only collected at district level. For cities inside a district those indicators are missing rather than filled in with the district value. The response carries the number of indicators actually present, and cities without an ingested set report that openly as a status instead of inventing a value.