Abstract
Social sustainability is a nebulous term that has conceptual overlaps with numerous other terms: social capital, cohesion, solidarity, order and integration, to name a few. It is also considered an umbrella term, encompassing a wide and diverse range of factors or dimensions including education, mental and physical health, personal safety, access to services, facilities and resources, a sense of community, a sense of place attachment, poverty, human rights, social equity, participation and social exclusion. Furthermore, to look at social sustainability in isolation without considering environmental and economic sustainability is frowned upon. Unsurprisingly then, when researchers grapple with social sustainability through empirical examination two things often happen. First, despite pointing out the overwhelming need for a definition, on the whole, researchers and commentators shy away from defining social sustainability in any detail. Secondly, given its all-encompassing nature, it is impossible empirically to examine the concept fully or as part of the wider concept of sustainability. Readers must therefore recognise that, when based on empirical research, researchers can often only cover a fraction of social sustainability.
The edited book Social Sustainability in Urban Areas is therefore no exception to such tendencies. The book aims to offer the students and practitioners we engage a useful background discussion of the theoretical and practical challenges associated with achieving greater social sustainability (p. xv).
This reviewer cannot comment on how the authors engage their students and practitioners at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster, but as a background discussion, the book is successful, to a point.
Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the concept of social sustainability and will disappoint those familiar with social sustainability as nothing new is presented. Perhaps the largely descriptive chapter’s aim was to reflect the breadth and vagueness of the concept, but key references are missing. For example, given the book’s focus on urban sustainability in the UK (particularly England), it was disconcerting that the considerable body of recent empirical UK research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (through its Sustainable Urban Environments programme initiated in 2003) was not mentioned at all. However, this chapter does provide a discussion of the limitations of social sustainability as a concept which, as the authors point out, is often not provided.
The individual chapters making up the main body of the book contribute more to the debate, providing empirical analyses of social sustainability in different contexts. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on the neighbourhood as the “micro-spatial scale of urban planning” (p. 31). Chapter 2 explores how the UK policy of mixed-income communities is bound up with the concept of social sustainability and applied in practice in London, south-east England and Edinburgh, based on stakeholder interviews. Manzi argues that “state-sponsored gentrification” (p. 46) does not work: a long-term commitment to economic infrastructure is crucial for social sustainability to be achieved.
Chapter 3 examines the community land trust as a model of housing provision to address local needs of long-term affordability and supply. The CLT aims to engage local residents and involves organisations and financial mechanisms to ensure sustainability in perpetuity. Despite only recently being acknowledged in government policy, Bailey argues that CLTs have great potential to provide a people-centred approach in housing policy.
Chapter 4, on neighbourhood asset management, discusses how physical entities become assets only when they are used and of value to someone. This chapter tests ideas of social capital and focuses on the nature and extent of social networks/bonds and the contribution of institutional frameworks. Allen and Lloyd-Jones call on a fascinating combination of small projects based in India, sub-Saharan Africa, Jakarta and Soho illustrating the importance of cumulatively changing social, organisational and institutional and physical factors.
Chapter 5 focuses on gender and social sustainability in developed and developing countries and the importance of gender-specific needs for the development of social networks as communication and information tools. Gandelsonas calls on case studies in Pakistan, Argentina and Spain and finds that women are particularly effective at forming community-based networks, organisations and partnerships.
Section 2 focuses on the provision of social infrastructure to support sustainable communities. Chapter 6 assesses the social sustainability of residential intensification through an examination of the provision of family homes and local schools in London. For Nelson, housing and neighbourhood strategies must incorporate the provision of housing for families, with further investment in primary and secondary schools to encourage families to remain in higher-density areas.
In Chapter 7, Lucas et al. discuss the impact of the UK’s transport policies on actual transport provision within and between communities and to activities. To help achieve sustainability, they advocate an accessibility planning model as a tool to assess the availability, affordability and accessibility of local public transport to help in a multistakeholder decision-making process.
Chapter 8 focuses on the impact of teleworking on social sustainability. Working without the need to commute between home and work has been recognised for some time, but White et al. find that there is not a clear, or (expected?) negative, association between teleworking and distance travelled to work. Opportunities for teleworking are underpinned particularly by the nature of one’s work: for example, non-site-specific work would favour those in certain sectors of the service industry more than those in manufacturing.
Section 3 examines the impact of economic policies on sustainable communities, particularly relating to social equity and quality of life. Chapter 9 presents a detailed account of the role planning obligations play in social infrastructure provision. Marsh highlights the widespread acceptance that negative social impacts on infrastructure provision should be mitigated in part by developers. The process is not simple and is exacerbated by the current economic climate, which Marsh argues will adversely affect the pursuit of social sustainability via planning obligations.
Chapter 10 considers the impact of the night-time economy on social sustainability. Eldridge points to some UK cities which have increased city-centre populations, but calls into question the claimed socially sustainable aims of the urban renaissance approach of attracting people back into the city. Limited opportunities for using the city at night beyond bars and clubs, and little inclusive public engagement in decision-making mean that residents and users will consider the city as a place for consumption, not participation.
Chapter 11 examines the relationship between major events (such as the Olympics, World Expos) and social sustainability. Using the Commonwealth Games 2002 (Manchester) as a case study, Smith highlights low community involvement, poor spatial integration and poor records of providing mixed-income housing as the biggest challenges to social sustainability.
The book leaves the reader frustrated, with the conclusion culminating in a list of core principles that should be the basis for future urban planning policies. These are, on the whole, the same principles examined and tested in preceding chapters. While the principles are laudable, they are vague, broad and lead us straight back to the first chapter. They do not reflect the in-depth understanding of practical issues around social sustainability provided in the main body of the book. For example, the importance of cross-sector partnership working and the need to clarify for whom social sustainability is sought, given varied roles and interests, emerge as important themes throughout the book. The importance of local context is also a consistent theme, which could have been illustrated more fully by the inclusion of more international case studies—they only appear in two of the twelve chapters, the rest of which are predominantly focused on England, far more than the book title and the accompanying text suggest. A number of chapters also highlight the conflict between short-term funding streams (such as capital funds for facilities) and the long-term goal of socially sustainable places, and the difficulty of securing revenue funding. Such practical issues need to be higher up the political agenda, particularly in light of the ongoing budget cuts and changes to UK policy (namely, the Localism Bill and National Planning Policy Framework). Understanding how social sustainability can be maintained, enhanced and supported in practice in the face of real economic constraint and the policy focus on localism is clearly now a priority. Despite being published before these recent UK policy changes, this book presents some excellent practical examples to further one’s understanding of social sustainability and provides readers with innovative approaches to inform context-specific solutions.