Abstract
The issue of sustainability which started as an environmental concern has gained currency in research and media for a number of years, and it has been defined in a number of ways, each reflecting a particular approach or theoretical basis. While the term ‘sustainability’ has been in use for around two decades, the most referred to aspects are environmental, economic and social sustainability. Environmental sustainability is perhaps the most easily quantified. The impact of the development on the ecology of the earth is to be kept to a minimum. The embodied energy of materials used on site, the energy consumption of the development once complete and lived in are measured or projections of such consumption are considered to gauge the impact of the development. Economic sustainability is probably the most easily quantifiable of the three measures of sustainability. The project simply cannot be carried out unless it functions as an economic proposition.
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Notes
- 1.
The Bill was approved in the House of Commons on 24 October 2012 by 260 votes to 206.
- 2.
In this text, social housing refers to state-assisted housing, which is mainly Local Authority housing or that provided by Registered Social Landlords, which constitute Housing Associations
- 3.
Returning to the concept of social cohesion, the definition needs expanding and refining. In 2003, a cohesive community was defined by the ODPM-appointed committee as one where: ‘there is a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities; the diversity of people’s different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued; those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities; and strong and positive relationships are being developed between people from different backgrounds in the workplace, in schools and within neighbourhoods’. The definition of cohesion was influenced by the fact that the report followed disturbances in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in the summer of 2001 and it was commissioned in order to advise on long-term integrated programmes in order to achieve social cohesion.
Ethnicity and immigrant communities feature in many such reports or research. A study funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that any racialised tensions between residents of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods had ‘material underpinnings around struggles for resources such as employment, housing and the physical infrastructure of the neighbourhood’ (Policy Studies Institute 2007)
- 4.
A particular case raised in the Parliament relates to a development in Islington. According to the Member of Parliament for Islington South and Finsbury, the Local Authority ‘sold a large site formerly owned by the public, where the developers are proposing to build 88 % luxury flats’ [Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury led the debate on the housing crisis in the Parliament on 6th February 2015, Available at: www.emilythornberry.com/news/99/22/Housing-Crisis-Debate; Accessed: 14.02.2015]
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Manoochehri, J. (2016). Social Sustainability and the Housing Problem. In: Dastbaz, M., Strange, I., Selkowitz, S. (eds) Building Sustainable Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19348-9_14
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