A growing body of evidence indicates that the environmental quality of residential
neighbourhoods has an impact on their liveability. It can be a contributory factor to the
prosperity and development of cities because it reflects the real-life experiences of residents and
can also affect the attractiveness of a city for well-qualified workers. A liveable neighbourhood
can help to improve the quality of life of residents, which is one of the determining factors in
creating a socially sustainable urban environment. This research aimed to develop a practical
method for assessing the liveability of a residential neighbourhood, tested in two contrasting
countries, Iran and Estonia. We developed and tested a set of criteria based on the principles and
attributes of liveability obtained from the literature and we used a Delphi survey of Iranian and
Estonian urban planning and design experts to identify which of the candidate criteria were most
appropriate to each country together with their priority weighting. The results showed that while
many of the same criteria applied to both countries, the importance of them varied, in part
reflecting environmental and social differences such as climate. The method has potential for use
in the development of indicators of liveability as part of urban sustainability assessment.