Challenging policy barriers in sustainable urban design

Birkeland Janis ()
Additional contact information
Birkeland Janis: University of Melbourne, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, VIC 3010, Melbourne, Australia

Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 2018, vol. 40, issue 40, 41-56

Abstract: In built environment design, codes set minimum health and safety requirements, policies set aspirational targets, and incentives such as green building rating schemes set design standards. These approaches have failed to provide universal well-being and environmental justice (i.e. intra-generational equity), or increases in the natural life-support system that exceed depletion rates (i.e. inter- generational equity). Governments that do not ensure all citizens can obtain basic needs, life quality and resource security fail to meet their basic responsibilities. Two recent documents, one representing sustainable urban policy and principles, the other representing urban biodiversity standards, are examined against the Positive Development Test (whether the development increases the public estate, ecological base and future public options). The discussion suggests that contemporary policies and incentive schemes, as presently conceived, cannot provide the basic physical preconditions for sustainability, let alone address socio-economic inequities. An alternative design-based approach is presented to address the issues the paper identified.

Keywords: urban design; positive development; green building rating tools; net-positive design; urban biodiversity; New Urban Agenda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2018-0013 (text/html)

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:vrs:buogeo:v:40:y:2018:i:40:p:41-56:n:3

DOI: 10.2478/bog-2018-0013

Access Statistics for this article

Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series is currently edited by Daniela Szymańska

More articles in Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().