Is this none of the contractor's business? Social sustainability challenges informed by literary accounts

Martine Buser and Christian Koch

Construction Management and Economics, 2014, vol. 32, issue 7-8, 749-759

Abstract: In Sweden many suburbs built at the end of the 1960s are in need of physical renovation to comply with new energy regulations. Some of these neighbourhoods face serious social challenges which also need to be tackled. The three largest Swedish contractors, usually very active in providing technical and environmentally friendly renovation, claim now they can provide social sustainability solutions on a commercial basis. For many years the problems of deprived suburbs have attracted the attention and the care of the public institutions, and though many initiatives have been carried out to address these issues, results have been sometimes quite limited. To discuss the social challenges linked to suburbs' renovation, an alternative method is proposed: the analysis of literary accounts. The goal is to assess whether stories relating the lives of residents in deprived Swedish suburbs can inform and therefore contribute to the development of socially sustainable solutions. Referring to the literature on social sustainability, this qualitative and explorative study uses critical discourse analysis as the method. Results suggest that focusing on renovated housing, employment, social services and leisure activities is not enough to rehabilitate disadvantaged neighbourhoods. They also indicate some specific problems linked to the built environment that contractors could help to solve.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2014.927898 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:32:y:2014:i:7-8:p:749-759

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2014.927898

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().