social sustainability and future communities

Presentation to AiCe-BS 2012 Conference Saffron Woodcraft

31 October 2012

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY & FUTURE COMMUNITIES:

Moving from concept to practice in the UK

1.  Social sustainability as an emerging planning

practice in UK / Europe

2.  Is it good to be socially sustainable?

3.  Measuring social sustainability: an experimental framework

Social Life is a new organization with a long-heritage of work on communities, planning & placemaking.

200 years of large-scale planned new communities in the UK but still relatively little known about what makes places thrive.

SITUATING SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

Is emerging work on social sustainability in “the grey area between academic, policy and practice discourse”?

Davoudi et al., 2012. Resilience: A Bridging Concept or a Dead End? Planning Theory & Practice, 13 (2)

•  Social = ‘relating to society or its organization’

•  Sustainable = ‘able to maintained at a certain rate or level’

Source: Oxford Dictionaries, 2012.

What is social sustainability?

Multiple and conflicting interpretations

•  Equality, democracy and social justice (Sachs 1999; Agyeman 2008)

•  Underdevelopment, basic needs, stronger environmental ethics (Vallance et al., 2011)

•  Social capital, human capital, wellbeing – relationship to place & urban development (Colantonio & Dixon 2010; Dempsey et al., 2011; Weingaertner & Moburg 2011; Murphy 2012; Magee et al., 2012)

•  Preservation of social values, cultural traditions and ways of life (Barbier 1987; Koning 2002; Vallance et al., 2011)

“ … [social sustainability] is a concept in chaos, and we argue that this severely compromises its utility and importance.”

Vallance et al., 2011. What is social sustainability? A clarification of concepts. Geoforum, 42.

Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities

Figure 1. The triangle of conflicting goals for planning, and the three associated conflicts. Planners define themselves, implicitly, by where they stand on the triangle. The elusive ideal of sustainable development leads one to the center.

The Points (Corners) of the Triangle: the Economy, the Environment, and Equity

The three types of priorities lead to three perspectives on the city: The economic development planner sees the city as a location where production, consumption, distribution, and innovation take place. The city is in competition with other cities for markets and for new industries. Space is the economic space of highways, market areas, and commuter zones.

The environmental planner sees the city as a consumer of resources and a producer of wastes. The city is in competition with nature for scarce resources and land, and always poses a threat to nature. Space is the ecological space of greenways, river basins, ecological niches.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sdcamp/Ecoeco/Greencities.html (4 of 30)2/1/2007 11:29:01 AM

Source: Campbell, S., 1996. Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities? Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development. Journal of the American Planning Association, 62 (3).

The planners triangle

“Lexicon of austerity” & social unrest?

Social sustainability as planning practice

•  Planning to support:

– Social capital – Wellbeing – Voice and empowerment

•  Must be related to social and spatial justice in built environment

Debate in planning practice: “… arguably creates a space for innovation and change that we have not seen for decades.”

Bertolini et al., 2011. Planning and the Recession.

Planning Theory & Practice, 12 (3)

IS IT GOOD TO BE SOCIALLY SUSTAINABLE?

1.  What is the purpose of social sustainability?

2.  Who and what is being sustained?

3.  Why and at what cost?

4.  Is sustainability what is needed?

5.  How to translate concepts to practice without losing integrity?

Critical questions

TOWARDS A MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY?

Social sustainability as a planning framework

Source: Social Life, Design for Social Sustainability: a practical framework for building communities, 2012.

Table 1: Urban social sustainability: contributory factors, Dempsey et al., 2009.

Source: Dempsey, N. et al., (2011). The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability.

Review of existing frameworks

Measurement framework for Berkeley

Social sustainability indicators •  Three dimensions, 13

indicators, underpinned by 45 questions

•  Majority of questions from nationally recognised surveys or industry frameworks

•  Small number of created questions

Data sources

How to measure the social sustainability of new housing development Chapter 2.0 21 How to measure the social sustainability of new housing development20 Chapter 2.0

www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/sustainabilitywww.berkeleygroup.co.uk/sustainability

The three different dimensions of the framework (social and cultural life, voice and influence, and amenities and infrastructure) are underpinned by 13 different indicators. In turn, the 13 indicators are underpinned by 45 different questions.

The indicators for the social and cultural life and voice and influence dimensions were created by selecting questions from large-scale national datasets that captured key issues within these two dimensions (datasets used were the Understanding Society Survey, the Taking Part Survey, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, and the Citizenship Survey). A number of questions were created for the social and cultural life dimension where appropriate questions did not already exist.

The indicators from the amenities and infrastructure dimension of the framework were created by selecting questions from the Building for Life assessment tool, from PTAL (Public Transport Accessibility Level) assessments and from additional sources of secondary data about residents’ travel habits. Additionally, a number of questions were created for this dimension where appropriate questions did not already exist.

A full explanation of the indicator selection process is included in Part Two of the report (see sections 2.1, 2.5 and 2.6).

Selecting the indicators 2.1 Creating the framework

TABLE 2: NATIONAL SURVEYS INCLUDED IN THE ANALYSIS

British Household Panel Survey/Understanding Society (BHPS/US)

• Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), 1996 to present

• 100,000 individuals in 40,000 British households

• Data used from 2008-2009 Innovation Panel Waves 1-2

Taking Part (TP)

• Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 2005 to present

• 14,000 participants

• Data taken from 2010-2011 survey

Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly British Crime Survey (BCS)

• Home Office,1986 to present

• 51,000 participants

• Data taken from 2010-2011 survey

Citizenship Survey (CS)

• Department for Communities and Local Government, 2001 to 2011 (biannual to 2007, annual 2008 to 2011)

• 11,000 participants

• Data taken from 2009-2010 survey

FIGURE 3: THE 13 INDICATORS

Site survey

Residents’ survey within development

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• Provision of community space (AI1)

• Transport links (AI2 )• Place with distinctive character (AI3 )

• Integration with wider neighbourhood (AI4 )

• Accessible street layout (AI5)• Physical space on development that is adaptable in

the future (AI6 )

• Perceptions of ability to influence local area (VI1)

• Willingness to act to improve area (VI2 )

• Positive local identity (SC1)• Relationships with neighbours (SC2)• Well-being (SC3)• Feelings of safety (SC4 )• Community facilities (SC5)

Data analysis

•  Data from residents survey

benchmarked against national data & statistically tested

•  Benchmarked against national psycho-geographic categorisations (OACs)

•  Only results that had statistical significance reported

•  Site survey data assessed against industry standards

•  Created questions assessed separately

The Hamptons OAC categories

Empire Square, Bermondsey 567 homes, 30% affordable, completed 2007

•  Pic and v short description

Imperial Wharf, Fulham 1,428 homes, 47% affordable, completion 2013

Knowle

•  Pic and v short description

Knowle Village, Hampshire 701 homes, 31% affordable, completed 2012

The Hamptons, Worcester Park 645 homes, 33% affordable, completed 2012

Resident responses

The Hamptons

Lessons from the work

•  Private vs public sector accountability

•  Analysis of underlying factors

•  Contextual, qualitative work

•  Snapshot vs longitudinal data

•  Mixed methods and data sources

•  Scope

Challenges and future work

•  Social sustainability is complex and context specific

•  Requires serious consideration of how social justice & equality translate to the built environment

•  More work is needed to understand what social sustainability means at neighbourhood level to ensure the policy agenda doesn’t overtake the research agenda

social-life.co saffron.woodcraft@social-life.co