The use of social capital in urban planning decision making

This research seeks to answer whether in the era of smart growth, urban consolidation, and societal emphasis on individualism, how social capital can support decision making to foster sustainable development in the urban planning discipline. This research will investigate how social capital concepts could improve master planning to contribute to using social capital dimensions in urban planning decision making. There is limited empirical research on how social capital is measured in communities that are not socio-economically disadvantaged and how this data cansupport the social dimension of sustainability in an urban planning context. Further, measurement of social capital is generally concerned with either qualitative or quantitative approaches, which often subsumes the intricacies of the social capital concept. This research will use mixed methods to contribute to the gap in the literature on how the elements of social capital could contribute to measuring the social dimensions of sustainable development in an urban planning context. The aim of this research therefore is to measure and understand social capital at a neighbourhood scale, to provide clearer insight into how social capital can be measured and applied to deliver more socially sustainable urban planning outcomes and to provide empirical data to inform urban and regional decision making processes. The objective is to investigate how community perspectives, sustainable urban planning and integrated development responses can deliver community elicited indicators through the lens of social capital. The research will analyse the extent of social capital as defi ned by Putnam (2000) and Szreter & Woolcock (2004), by measuring social capital, the perspectives of the community using quantitative and qualitative methods to build a picture around social capital in a case study community on the Sunshine Coast