ULE Framework Scoring Dataset: Three US Metropolitan Regions

ULE Framework Scoring Dataset: Three US Metropolitan Regions This dataset contains the complete condition-level scoring record produced by applying the Urban Living Lab Legal Enablement (ULE) framework to three US metropolitan regions selected for their contrasting institutional architectures: New York City, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon. The ULE framework diagnoses whether a governance system possesses the institutional conditions required for an ecology-oriented urban living lab 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). SUMMARY OF RESULTS E1 Statutory Enactment — New York City: partial (1) · Philadelphia: partial (1) · Portland: partial, upper bound (1)E2 Governance Empowerment — New York City: partial (1) · Philadelphia: partial (1) · Portland: substantial (2)E3 Financial Endowment — New York City: substantial (2) · Philadelphia: substantial (2) · Portland: partial (1)E4 Evidentiary Mandate — New York City: partial (1) · Philadelphia: partial, upper bound (1) · Portland: partial, upper bound (1)E5 Epistemic Translation — New York City: partial, sectorally bounded (1) · Philadelphia: partial, sectorally bounded (1) · Portland: partial, procedurally scheduled (1)Total — New York City: 6/10 · Philadelphia: 6/10 · Portland: 6/10 HOW TO READ THESE TOTALS The three cities record identical totals through different institutional routes, and that is the analytically significant result rather than an artefact. New York City and Philadelphia reach substantial financial endowment through consent-order capital commitments while holding only partial governance empowerment; Portland reaches substantial governance empowerment through statutory agency authority and formally recognised watershed councils while holding only partial financial endowment. Numeric equivalence conceals structural difference, and the provision_form field is where that difference is recorded. No city reaches substantial on epistemic translation. Each holds a bounded version of it: two within a regulatory compliance domain, one within an agency watershed mandate. In no case does ecological evidence formally enter zoning, comprehensive plan revision or capital planning. CONTENTS ule_scores_three_us_metros.csv — 15 records (5 conditions x 3 cities) with score, provision relied upon, provision form, coding reasoning, source documents, the score recorded in the associated manuscript, and a revision note where the two differ.document_corpus_three_us_metros.csv — the primary document corpus by category (N=54), with the conditions each category informs and key primary sources.ULE_Scoring_Report_Three_US_Metros.pdf — human-readable data report generated from the CSV files, presenting the complete scoring record, coding reasoning and document corpus. 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 so that a single authoritative version of the protocol governs every case set scored with it. RECORDED REVISIONS Two scores in this record differ from the associated manuscript. Both are recorded here with their reasoning rather than silently incorporated. New York City, E5 — revised from absent to partial (sectorally bounded) following re-examination of the 2025 MS4 Annual Report, which post-dates the original coding and documents a recurring, procedurally defined evidence-to-revision cycle within the Stormwater Management Program. Philadelphia, E3 — revised from partial to substantial following application of the symmetric evidentiary standard. The construction-versus-governance test used to withhold the higher score from Philadelphia had not been applied to New York City, whose comparable consent-order-anchored commitment is also construction-directed and was scored substantial. Neither revision alters the position of any city in the maturity model reported in the associated manuscript. METHOD The condition definitions, scoring scale and decision rules applied here are set out in a separate record: Celik Yilmaz, O. (2026). Urban Living Lab Legal Enablement (ULE) Framework: Codebook and Scoring Protocol. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21645631 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. FUNDING Prepared within the TUBITAK 2218 National Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkiye). ## Version 2 — what changed and why This version adds a document-level inventory and corrects three document names. Nothing inthe scoring changed: every condition score, score symbol and coding rationale is identical toversion 1. **A document inventory has been added.** Version 1 reported the corpus as a table of sixcategories totalling 54 documents, but did not list the documents themselves. The documentsrelied upon were named cell by cell in the scoring record, in different forms, and the twofiles did not reconcile: ten documents appeared only in the scoring record and eleven only inthe category table. `document_inventory.csv` now lists every document once, with a durableidentifier (statute citation, permit number, docket number or solicitation number where oneexists), a locator and an access date. **The corpus is now reported as 49 documents rather than 54.** Four documents counted in theversion 1 category table could not be identified from any field of the deposit and have beenremoved rather than carried forward unnamed. One further entry was a duplicate under a secondname (see below). The revised distribution is: | Category | Description | Documents || 1 | National and state planning legislation and enabling statutes | 6 || 2 | Municipal environmental codes and ecological ordinances | 10 || 3 | Agency strategic plans and programme guidelines | 11 || 4 | Consent decrees and NPDES regulatory compliance | 5 || 5 | Federal programme guidelines (EPA, HUD, NSF, USDA) | 8 || 6 | Ecological monitoring reports, climate action and watershed plans | 10 | **Three documents were renamed.** Each was recorded under a name that did not identify itcorrectly; the scoring record has been corrected and the inventory records the earlier name. - *ORS Title 13* → **Metro Title 13**. Oregon Revised Statutes Title 13 concerns housing, games and environment and is not the instrument relied upon. The document relied upon for Portland E1, E2 and E4 is Metro Code §3.07 Title 13, Nature in Neighborhoods, which was already listed separately; the two entries have been merged.- *Oregon lottery bond documentation* → **Metro natural areas and parks bond measures** (2006 Natural Areas Bond; 2019 Parks and Nature Bond).- *NSF Urban Area Sustainability Initiative* → **NSF Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS)**, NSF Dear Colleague Letter 19-032 (2018). **Why this matters for the analysis.** The scoring record was published so that each scorecould be traced to a named provision in a named document. Naming a document is not the sameas making it retrievable, and on that second requirement version 1 fell short. This versiondoes not change what the data say; it makes the claim of traceability checkable.