As an indicator of development progress, GDP has some obvious disadvantages. This research develops Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as an alternative indicator. GPI was divided into three components including economy, society and environment. With the methodology developed, a case study was made in Suzhou, Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Yangzhou city. The result shows that it has faults in measuring progress only with GDP, while GPI can measure the urban sustainability effectively and evaluate the performance and the cost of the economic growth.