In order to be truly effective, the strategies pursued to achieve sustainable development must be tailored to fit with the unique characteristics in which they are being developed and implemented. This paper examines the potential for measuring the flow of materials for the creation of robust urban sustainability strategies for a fast-growing city. To this end, we examine complex issues of resources management in Cairo (Egypt) as an example of such challenges in a rapidly urbanizing Global South's city. The research considers cities both as consumers of primary resources (renewable and non-renewable resources) and producers of secondary resources (waste and wastewater). In terms of policy practice and academic research, the ability to measure, assess and control these resources is crucial for improving the sustainability performance of developing countries. Yet a key challenge to this ambition is the lack of reliable data and the difficulty of tracking the flow of materials in the Global South, particularly in rapidly urbanizing cities with significant growth of unplanned, informal settlements. The proposed study examines these resources by utilizing two principal data gathering methods: 1) a quantitative data collection to fill an existing indicator set; and 2) qualitative interviews with representatives from public authorities and site visits. This tests the applicability of the existing tool to understand the unique characteristics of Cairo, drivers and barriers to sustainable resources management.