Understanding sustainability in the built environment : a framework for evaluation in urban planning and design

It has often been recognised that planning and design can play an important role inthe achievement of sustainable development of cities. However, problems still existwith regards to both a clear understanding of sustainability in the built environmentand a means of evaluating it within the context of urban planning and design.This thesis has compared different evaluation methods in urban planning, bothex ante approaches and monitoring, and their philosophical paradigms. Somesignificant limitations are identified and discussed in the context of sustainability,such as the reductionism within many of the approaches and the lack of holism in theevaluation. The identified deficiencies provide the motivation for the development ofa new framework which is able to integrate the different dimensions of sustainabilityin the built environment. This is based on the Cosmonomic theory of Dooyeweerdwhich has proved to be more appropriate than other philosophical paradigms inachieving this task.The theory is applied to the built environment for understanding sustainabilityand developing a framework in planning evaluation. The framework helps decisionmakers to critically identifSr the sustainability aspects involved in a (re)developmentplanning project, guiding them in the evaluation on the basis of a number of problemsolving methods. Some existing case studies are adopted to show the benefits of theframework in the context of regeneration programmes for cities, managementpolicies for cultural heritage and environmental services.The resulting framework provides a significant step forward in understandingand evaluating the built environment in the context of a sustainable urbandevelopment. It also has the potential to allow evaluation of the concept ofsustainability over time