Sustainable Communities extract

Table of Contents

Foreword Peter Roberts

1 Learning about sustainable communities Robert Rogerson, Sue Sadler, Anne Green and Cecilia Wong Creating

Section I Learning as professionals

2 Educating built environment professionals for stakeholder engagement Sarah Sayce and Judith Farren-Bradley

3 Generic skills and workplace learning: supporting professional development through online learning communities Ann Hockey, Carlos Jimenez-Bescos, Janice Maclean and Martin Spaul

4 Developing the learning potential of strategic environmental assessment in spatial planning Sue Kidd, Thomas Fischer and Urmila Jha-Thakur

5 Situated learning and the delivery of built environments for sustainable communities Ian Smith

Section II Learning to work together

6 Understanding and experimenting with skills for community planning Brendan Murtagh and Geraint Ellis

7 Raising catchment consciousness: how imaginative engagement can help sustainable use of rivers Paul Selman, Claudia Carter, Clare Morgan and Anna Lawrence

8 Confronting sustainable community issues in a contested city Ken Sterrett and Frank Gaffikin

9 ‘Chain gang conservation’: young people and environmental volunteering Michael Leyshon and Robert Fish

10 Action research to promote leadership and agency in developing sustainable schools and communities Barry Percy-Smith

11 The future of sustainable communities Robert Rogerson and Sue Sadler

Extract from Sustainable Communities

Taken from Chapter 1 Learning about sustainable communities

In the forty years since the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) adopted a mandate with the aim of achieving the highest sustainable quality of life and the perpetuation and enhancement of the living world, the notion of sustainability achieved through the process of sustainable development has progressively moved to the forefront of international and national government planning. It has become the concern, too, of business leaders and non-governmental organisations at a variety of spatial scales.

Despite the passage of time, there remains no single accepted definition of what sustainable development is, although the Brundtland Report’s definition from 1987 is probably the most widely quoted: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Indeed, this very lack of precision in both its definition and practice makes the notion of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainability’ as a goal all the more attractive – but with its own difficulties. As the 2006 IUCN report, ‘Renowned Thinkers Meeting’, commented:

the concept is holistic, attractive, elastic but imprecise. The idea of sustainable development may bring people together but it does not necessarily help them to agree goals. In implying everything sustainable development arguably ends up meaning nothing. (Adams 2006: 3)

Sustainability has become an established ‘brand’ – not only one that expresses an aspiration to manage resources more effectively, but also one that imbues policy making and thinking with sensitivity towards rebalancing environmental, social and economic dimensions. Importantly, too, this brand can help bring about behavioural change by individuals, organisations and governments.

There is agreement that achieving sustainability requires balancing economic, environmental and social goals. Beyond that, however, there is dispute. For some people trade-offs between these dimensions are allowed, whilst others point out that the three dimensions are unequal, with the environment, for example, underpinning both economy and society and presenting a finite limit of human activity, but with economy and society, of course, impacting on the environment. Furthermore there is no agreed way to measure sustainability and thus define the extent to which sustainable development is being achieved through any set of actions (Campbell 1996). One of the central dilemmas with sustainable development concerns its vagueness and holistic nature. As Stephen Morse expressed it:

It does make one wonder whether we are perhaps trying to embrace too much. Is it all just appealing theory that spans many ideas, covers many approaches (quantitative and qualitative) and scales (social, spatial or otherwise) and readily absorbs an unlimited deconstruction? If so will sustainable development inevitably be flawed when put into practice? Is the translation from theory to practice impossible given the imperfections of human beings? (Morse 2009: 126–7)

Concerns about how to put the notions of sustainable development into practice have long been the subject of debate, and after thirty years Hugh Barton (2000: 246) expressed with considerable exasperation:

there is a prevailing lack of determination on the part of the public and private sector agencies who shape the physical environmental to convert the noble (over-rehearsed) rhetoric of sustainable development into practice.

One result has been difficult challenges in connecting critical issues at the global level, such as climate change, with local actions and daily lives where more immediate issues have to be addressed. At the start of the twenty-first century, Barton expressed this as a lack of will. This, he argued, had impeded greater empowerment of local communities and development of partnerships for action, failing to change the prevailing culture of local decision makers and professionals, or to align fiscal priorities and institutional remits with their laudable aims for sustainability.

Barton’s central argument was that government (and thus other people’s) actions and policies are fragmented, often pulling in different directions. Economic development priorities, for instance, reinforce the need for new housing to be concentrated in regions such as the South-East of England where land use pressures are already severe, which, in turn, reinforce its role as the economic powerhouse of the country. And conversely, policies which support greater mixed land use or brownfield site development have been easier to achieve when associated with regeneration of older industrial areas in other parts of the UK than in those areas where people are seeking to live.

Finding ways to bridge the scalar divisions of global and local, and for greater coordination of action alongside local empowerment, lies at the heart of sustainable communities. The intention of creating places that offer high quality of life to residents and contribute to national and global sustainable development principles, as Peter Roberts notes in the foreword, is the essence of the contemporary notion of sustainable communities.

In this book we explore how, in the context of the UK, sustainable communities have emerged as a focus for government policy and for community action. Drawing on research conducted across UK universities and with community-based groups, the chapters offer insights into how local developments can enhance sustainable development and engage people in creating more desirable, higher quality of life places in which to live.

This book not only illustrates some of the trans-disciplinary research that exemplifies this approach, but also presents accessible and practical examples of the processes by which communities and built environment professionals involved in the generation of a more sustainable future are working together, and learning together. It considers how such learning can result in more inclusive, imaginative and desirable places to live, for the residents of today and for future generations. It shows how those involved – both professionals engaged with the construction and maintenance of the built environment, and community members – can work more effectively together to create communities that offer more sustainable futures. And, in so doing, it brings together elements of debates as diverse as sustainable development, education, community coherence and conflict resolution by drawing on the experiences of nine locally based examples from across the UK.