Single-family residential sector comes to the forefront in consideration of inefficient land use in urban areas. A lack of legislation, planning and evaluation reflects negatively on urban ecosystems, environment, natural balance and quality of life, and contributes to land deficiency. On the other hand, conditions on wider location and lot itself play significant role in achieving good ecological quality of residential unit and, further, of urban area in general. Formation of criteria for ecological evaluation of urban residential lots was proposed as a solution to this duality, and methodological path leading to criteria development was described. General methodology was then applied on two examples: cities Belgrade and Ljubljana, and resulting criteria were established for both. Local specificities manifested in variations among two proposals. Oppositely, common issues allowed the application of criteria in both cases. Beside the fact that evaluation systems designed for local level tackle local problems in the most comprehensive way, comparison showed that, while it is possible to apply criteria developed for Belgrade area in Ljubljana case, there exist major constraints in the immediate application of criteria proposed for Ljubljana area in Belgrade case, due to significant variations in reached overall (sustainable) urban development level. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.