ULE Framework Scoring Dataset: Istanbul and New York City

This dataset contains the complete condition-level scoring record produced by applying the Urban Living Lab Legal Enablement (ULE) framework to two megacities with contrasting ecological governance architectures: Istanbul and New York City. The ULE framework diagnoses whether a governance system possesses the institutional conditions required for an ecology-oriented urban living lab (EcoULL) to be established and to convert ecological knowledge into planning decisions. Five sequential conditions are assessed: statutory enactment (E1), governance empowerment (E2), financial endowment (E3), evidentiary mandate (E4), and epistemic translation (E5). The dataset underpins the Condition-Specific Institutional Learning (CSIL) analysis reported in the associated manuscript. It is released so that every score in that manuscript can be traced to a named institutional provision and its source document. How to read these totals: Scores measure enablement specifically for ecology-oriented urban living labs, not general environmental governance capacity. New York City records a higher total, but the two cities rely on structurally different provision types at equal score levels — see `provision_form` in the scores file and Section 4 of the codebook. Learning potential between the cities derives from difference in provision form, not fromdifference in level. Notes on this version: Version covers a different case pair from v1.0 (Netherlands–Türkiye, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20811367) and is released as a separate record rather than a revision of it. Two E5 scores were revised during preparation, and both revisions are recorded here rather than silentlyincorporated; the reasoning for each is given in full in the scores file. New York City's E5 was revised from *absent* to *partial (sectorally bounded)* following re-examination of the 2025 MS4 Annual Report, which documents a recurring evidence-to-revision cycle within the Stormwater Management Program. Istanbul's E5 was then revised from *absent* to *partial (procedurally scheduled)* following symmetricalre-examination of four statutory basin protection plans (Ömerli, Alibey, Elmalı, Büyükçekmece). These plans bind spatial planning at every scale and include an institutionally assigned revision procedure, but revision is scheduled by calendar rather than triggered by monitoring findings. The two cities hold complementary halves of the same condition: New York City has the evidence-to-revision procedure without spatial planning reach; Istanbul has the reach without the evidence-linked trigger. This symmetrical re-examination was carried out because the evidentiary standard applied to one city must be applied to the other (codebook, Section 5, step 4). Method: The condition definitions, scoring scale and decision rules applied here are set out in a separate record: Çelik Yılmaz, Ö. (2026). *Urban Living Lab Legal Enablement (ULE) Framework: Codebook and Scoring Protocol* (v1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21648617 This record contains the empirical scoring for Istanbul and New York City only. The protocol record should be cited alongside it in any reuse. Contents: This record contains three files. ule_scores_istanbul_nyc.csv — the scoring record: 10 rows (5 ULE conditions × 2 cities), each giving the score, the institutional provision relied upon, the form that provision takes, the full coding reasoning and the source documents. document_inventory_istanbul_nyc.csv — the document corpus: 31 primary documents analysed (18 for Istanbul, 13 for New York City), with the type of each document and the conditions it informs. ULE_Scoring_Report_Istanbul_NYC.pdf — a human-readable data report generated from the two CSV files, presenting the complete scoring record, coding reasoning and document corpus in readable form for inspection without opening the machine-readable files. The CSV files are the authoritative version of the data. Condition definitions, the scoring scale and the decision rules are not duplicated here; they are published separately with their own DOI (see Method). Access: Files in this record are under embargo until the associated manuscript completes peer review, in order to preserve author anonymity during anonymous review. The DOI is citable from the date of deposit; files are released on acceptance. Reuse: The scoring protocol is designed to be extended to further cities. Researchers applying it to new cases are invited to cite the framework paper and this dataset. Contact: [e-mail] Funding: Prepared within the TÜBİTAK 2218 National Postdoctoral Research Fellowship project on ecology-oriented urban living labs and watershed governance.