Vocabulary

Contemporary scholars generally accept the multidimensional understanding of sustainability - social, political, economic, cultural and environmental amongst other dimensions – but the concept used to be defined more narrowly as the ‘conservation of natural resources’ and the ‘restoration of ecological balance’ (Meadows et al. 1972). While the ‘Brundtland Report’ was instrumental in broadening the definition and bridging the environmental and economic dimensions (WCED 1987), it was Elkington who stressed the social dimension in the ‘triple bottom line’ of ‘people, planet, profit’ (1998). However, the role of community participation as an elementary part of social sustainability was only established after the turn of the millennium by Giddings et al. (2002). They emphasised the participation aspect of procedural equity “so that people are able to shape their own futures” (ibid., p.194). Dempsey et al. (2011) drew upon this contribution when they considered urban sustainability from a community approach and concluded that communities thrive upon social interaction between community members, organisational initiative through collective groups and networks, the relative stability of a neighbourhood in terms of net migration and turnover, a positive identification or sense of place and the level of trust that follows from a perception of safety. These factors are summarised by Dixon and Woodcraft (2013, p.475) as “the extent to which a neighbourhood supports individual and collective well-being (…) It combines design of the physical environment with a focus on how the people who live in and use a space relate to each other and function as a community”. While most community participation researchers look into social sustainability on the neighbourhood level, Putnam’s book ‘Bowling alone’ (2000) described how a lack of social capital, here understood as strong civic participation and localised empowerment, could prevent collective action and undermine democracy on the macro-level. 

Etymologically, the term sustainability comes from a Latin root as sustinere, as in holding up; it also means maintain, support and uphold (Harper, 2001; Jeronen, 2013). In modern English, sustainability has two meanings; as “the quality of being able to continue over a period of time” and environmentally as “the quality of causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time.” (Cambridge, 2021). In the German language (nachhaltigkeit, which means ‘lastingness’) sustainability use is traced to the 17th century as a forest management system (Caradonna, 2014, 2017); meanwhile, in English and French (durabilité), the use of sustainability term was not common until the early 20th century (Du Pisani, 2006) (Figure 1). Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the term ‘sustainable’ was first introduced into the political language by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and then by the Club of Rome and had become at the centre of interest for many scholars (Grober, 2007; Kopnina & Shoreman-Ouimet, 2015a). Since then, the use of the term had increased rapidly, especially after 1987, when the Brundtland Commission’s Report was published, becoming the cornerstone of sustainability and sustainable development concepts (Kopnina & Shoreman-Ouimet, 2015a). Keeping in mind the nuances differences between both terms, as the first is an umbrella concept that describes managing resources without depleting them for future generations, meanwhile the second is an overarching paradigm to improve long-term economic well-being and quality of life without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs (Kopnina & Shoreman-Ouimet, 2015b; UNESCO, 2015). In 2016 the United Nations General Assembly published the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), developed from the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established in 2001. The 17 SDGs call for all countries to mobilise efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change (UN, 2020). Defining sustainability is a wicked problem that requires us to ask, sustainability of what? (Murphy, 2012). Environmental sustainability is a dynamic, inclusive, and multidisciplinary concept that intersects with many other terms such as resilience, durability and renewability (Jabareen, 2006). It works at different scales—and it is composed of tangible (environment (planet)) and intangible (economic (profits), social (people)) aspects (Morelli, 2011). Sustainability aims to promote the responsible use of all-natural resources, support human well-being and encourage efficiency in industry, all without compromising the development capacity of our societies (Portney, 2015). Sustainability in design seeks to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of the built environment on nature. At the same time, it works to increase the health and comfort of inhabitants, thereby improving the performance of the built environment elements (McLennan, 2004). This requires effective theoretical and practical frameworks that address at least six areas, including site, water, energy, indoor and outdoor environment, economic and cultural preservation. It also necessitates comprehensive coordination between the buildings’ architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, and environmental systems during the design, construction and operation phases (Yates & Castro-Lacouture, 2018). The current approach of practising sustainability seeks to ‘reduce’ buildings consumption of resources (water, energy) and waste production while at the same ‘enhance’ the quality of the built environment; this goes beyond the boundaries of one building into the urban fabric of the city (Berardi, 2012). Measuring the level of sustainability is a complex process that deploys quantitative methods, including (1) indexes (e.g. energy efficiency rate), (2) indicators (e.g. carbon emission or carbon footprint), (3) benchmarks (e.g. water consumption per capita) and, (4) audits (e.g. building management system efficiency) (Arjen, 2015; Berardi, 2012; GORD, 2015; James, 2014; Kubba, 2012). Facilitating these purposes, the last few decades have witnessed the creation and development of several assessments or certificate systems and practice guidelines, most notably the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM, the UK) and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED, the US). In addition, several intersecting methods have emerged, such as Green Buildings, Passivhaus and Net-zero buildings standards.  

The linked social and environmental implications of urbanisation and the failures to adequately respond to pressing environmental concerns have amounted to a monumental undertaking for sustainability in urban and regional development. While, sustainable development has come to mean many different things, the term is also being criticised for being ambiguous (While et al., 2010) and too narrowly prescribed according to the predetermined targets and solutions of conventional sustainability management (Etzion et al., 2017). Systemic transformations within urban sustainability discourse are therefore not only becoming increasingly relevant (Wolfram & Frantzeskaki, 2016), they are imperative for re-defining sustainability and addressing contemporary global challenges. Sustainability goals are hence better understood and determined by considering social, economic and environmental effects across different geographic scales, as well as different land uses that are increasingly connected and importantly, by focusing on the inclusivity of marginalised social groups that are disproportionately affected (UN SDSN, 2013). At the local-scale, multi-level governance structures and emerging social innovation discourses (Coenen & Morgan, 2020) are emphasizing the role of neighbourhoods and communities by revealing the overlaps among social and ecological justice, even countering the hegemony of market-led urban development (Moulaert et al., 2007). Thus with citizen participation and empowerment featuring prominently in counter-hegemonic movements, grassroots innovations and small-scale initiatives for sustainable development, a singular definition of sustainability becomes problematic. Instead, alternative housing models such as co-housing that are re-emerging throughout Europe (Tummers, 2016), community solar schemes, interventions for degrowth in the suburbs (Alexander & Gleeson, 2017) are only a few recent examples of developments in “diverse sustainabilities” (Seyfang & Smith, 2007) that respond to the interests of the communities.  

Through the 1987 Brundtland report “Our Common Future”, the UN popularised the concept of sustainability as, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). This definition emerged from the pairing of ecological and social critiques of economic development, elaborating on the previous term “eco-development”, coined in 1975 as a merging of economic development with environmental integrity (Purvis, 2018).   Indicators of Sustainable Development: Guidelines and Methodologies (2001) definition of sustainability divided the issue into three main categories: economy, society and environment; the original draft included the category institutional – incorporating societal and legal norms, cultural determinants of development, and procedures (Spangenberg et al, 2002). Since then, a number of UN initiatives have been developed to encourage global cooperation of sustainable development: the declaration of a climate emergency (2016), the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (2015) and the Paris Agreement (2016).  When investigating affordable and sustainable housing, the issue must be approached holistically to satisfy the multiple facets of sustainability. Sustainability goes beyond the terms and goals pre-defined by the UN; the SDGs have been designed to provide a solid framework to justify and organise policy and action, and therefore have political agenda (Le Blanc, 2015). In order to continually strive towards (and surpass) the SDG’s, sustainability should be considered throughout every stage of design, planning and building interventions and renovations. This should also include multiple scales, from material choice to construction methods and processes, and energy consumption (Berardi, 2012). Worldwide retrofit schemes, such as RetrofitWorks and EnerPHit, encourage sustainable and affordable housing through improving building performance, decreasing energy consumption and reducing fuel poverty. A further vital consideration in sustainable design is a reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions; in developed countries, the construction industry accounts for 40% of total emissions (ibid).

Sustainability is primarily defined as 'the idea that goods and services should be produced in ways that do not use resources that cannot be replaced and that do not damage the environment' (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, n.d.) and is often used interchangeably with the term “sustainable development”(Aras & Crowther, 2009). As defined by the UN, sustainable development is the effort to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 1987) and is often interpreted as the strategies adopted towards sustainability with the latter being the overall goal/vision (Diesendorf, 2000). Both of these relatively general and often ambiguous terms have been a focal point for the past 20 years for researchers, policy makers, corporations as well as local communities, and activist groups, among others, (Purvis et al., 2019). The ambiguity and vagueness that characterise both of these terms have contributed to their leap into the global mainstream as well as the broad political consensus regarding their value and significance (Mebratu, 1998; Purvis et al., 2019), rendering them one of the dominant discourses in environmental, socio-political and economic issues (Tulloch, 2013). It is, however, highly contested whether their institutionalisation is a positive development. Tulloch, and Tulloch & Nielson (2013; 2014) argue that these terms -as they are currently understood- are the outcome of the “[colonisation of] environmentalist thought and action” which, during the 1960s and 1970s, argued that economic growth and ecological sustainability within the capitalist system were contradictory pursuits. This “colonisation” resulted in the disempowerment of such discourses and their subsequent “[subordination] to neoliberal hegemony” (Tulloch & Neilson, 2014, p. 26). Thus, sustainability and sustainable development, when articulated within neoliberalism, not only reinforce such disempowerment, through practices such as greenwashing, but also fail to address the intrinsic issues of a system that operates on, safeguards, and prioritises economic profit over social and ecological well-being (Jakobsen, 2022). Murray Bookchin (1982), in “The Ecology of Freedom” contends that social and environmental issues are profoundly entangled, and their origin can be traced to the notions of hierarchy and domination. Bookchin perceives the exploitative relationship with nature as a direct outcome of the development of hierarchies within early human societies and their proliferation ever since. In order to re-radicalise sustainability, we need to undertake the utopian task of revisiting our intra-relating, breaking down these hierarchical relations, and re-stitching our social fabric. The intra-relating between and within the molecules of a society (i.e. the different communities it consists of) determines how sustainability is understood and practised (or performed), both within these communities and within the society they form. In other words, a reconfigured, non-hierarchical, non-dominating intra-relationship is the element that can allow for an equitable, long-term setting for human activity in symbiosis with nature (Dempsey et al., 2011, p. 290). By encouraging, striving for, and providing the necessary space for all voices to be heard, for friction and empathy to occur, the aforementioned long-term setting for human activity based on a non-hierarchical, non-dominating intra-relating is strengthened, which augments the need for various forms of community participation in decision-making, from consulting to controlling. From the standpoint of spatial design and architecture, community participation is already acknowledged as being of inherent value in empowering communities (Jenkins & Forsyth, 2009), while inclusion in all facets of creation, and community control in management and maintenance can improve well-being and social reproduction (Newton & Rocco, 2022; Turner, 1982). However, much like sustainability, community participation has been co-opted by the neoliberal hegemony; often used as a “front” for legitimising political agendas or as panacea to all design problems, community participation has been heavily losing its significance as a force of social change (Smith & Iversen, 2018), thus becoming a depoliticised, romanticised prop. Marcus Miessen (2011) has developed a critical standpoint towards what is being labelled as participation; instead of a systematic effort to find common ground and/or reach consensus, participation through a cross-benching approach could be a way to create enclaves of disruption, i.e. processes where hierarchy and power relations are questioned, design becomes post-consensual spatial agency and participation turns into a fertile ground for internal struggle and contestation. Through this cross-benching premise, community participation is transformed into a re-politicised spatial force. In this context, design serves as a tool of expressing new imaginaries that stand against the reproduction of the neoliberal spatial discourse. Thus, sustainability through community participation could be defined as the politicised effort to question, deconstruct and dismantle the concept of dominance by reconfiguring the process of intra-relating between humans and non-humans alike.