Social Sustainability In Urban Areas

This groundbreaking new volume on social sustainability offers both critique and creative solutions. It challenges the conventional wisdoms of social sustainability and presents practical examples of projects that will help practitioners to think carefully and innovatively about the situations they are addressing. The book consists of original contributions from academics working in the fields of urban planning, housing, regeneration, transport and international sustainable development. Drawing on case study research gathered in the UK, Europe and Africa, it adopts an original, interdisciplinary approach to both theory and practice, illustrating the challenges and opportunities facing policy-makers and practitioners attempting to develop, manage and maintain sustainable communities. The authors argue that the dominant approach of 'how to do' small scale social sustainability fails to locate it within broader social processes. Ignoring the context not only sustains, but also actively reproduces wider inequalities. The book presents a new, more coherent and more complete approach to issues of social sustainability in urban areas. The book approaches current urban policy discourses in three different ways, represented by three sections: firstly focusing on small places within the urban fabric, secondly addressing the whole urban fabric by examining whether changing urban living and working patterns. The third section explores some of the ways that funding can be secured to achieve the aims of social sustainability and the social planning associated with it. Review: 'A timely and critical look at different ways in which [a] social perspective can help create genuinely 'sustainable communities'.' Chris Church, London 21 and UK Low Carbon Communities 'Theory and practice around sustainable development have consistently been at their weakest on how the social elements relate to the full picture. This intriguing book takes a timely and critical look at different ways in which this social perspective can help create genuinely 'sustainable communities'.' Chris Church, London 21 and UK Low Carbon Communities 'In my mind, Social Sustainability in Urban Areas is a welcome addition to the growing interest in issues of equity and building social capital in urban areas. But perhaps more important, the book stimulates our thinking about the difficulties we face both practically and theoretically in understanding and then creating socially sustainable urban communities.' Journal of Planning Education and Research 'Presenting multidimensional issues in the theory and multilayered institutional arrangements in the practice of social sustainability, this book is timely and an undeniable source for sustainable development in urban areas, opening our eyes to new ways of understanding and living in our cities in a truly social manner.' A. Senem Deviren, Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, Urban Research and Practice