THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

ii If human societies are to sustain over the long-term, we must manage human societies and our products, including settlements, to work within the context of a living environment. While conventional practice in neighbourhood planning has made advances in acknowledging the importance of sustainability in the built environment, it generally does not acknowledge fundamental ecological concepts such as the ecology of sites, global ecological productive carrying capacity or the dynamic nature of a living, rapidly eroding, biophysical environment. This thesis articulates the need to acknowledge the ecological context as the basis of sustainable communities. A living ecological system is not only the context in which settlements operate; ecosystems may also be a viable model from which to form settlements. This thesis proposes incorporating the model of ecosystems, the characteristics they embody and principles by which they are governed into the planning and design of settlements as a method of informing a physical form that can support sustainable communities