Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools like LEED-ND and BREEAM Communities assume stable governance and formal infrastructure—conditions rarely met in Global South cities. This paper moves beyond critique to propose a Healing-First Analytical Framework that re-sequences urban assessment, placing socio-ecological repair as a prerequisite for sustainability. While previous empirical work applied adapted NSA criteria to evaluate unplanned settlements (Tambal, 2025), this study addresses a theoretical gap: the absence of an analytical model that reimagines assessment’s purpose. Through a diagnostic case study of Burri al-Sharif, an unplanned neighbourhood in Khartoum, - the analysis demonstrates how foundational deficits—insecure tenure, flood vulnerability, inadequate sanitation, fractured governance—render standard benchmarks ethically problematic. Engaging Southern urbanism, decolonial theory, and infrastructure studies, this study conceptualises “healing” as active socio-ecological repair. The framework operationalises restorative justice through two analytical phases: a Healing Phase addressing critical deficits, followed by a Sustainability Phase where conventional sustainability optimisation becomes viable. By reframing assessment as repair rather than performance verification, the paper offers a context-sensitive pathway for urban planning in vulnerable landscapes, contributing a methodological intervention to debates on urban justice in the Global South.
