A Diversity of Eco-Developments: An Overview and Comparison of Sustainability in Six Eco-Developments

The illusion of participation: Are participatory indicators truly effective in neigborhood sustainability assessment tools

“…They were initially focused on buildings with tools such as BREEAM New Construction and LEED New construction being developed and were labelled building sustainability assessment tools. An evolutionary extension came about in the last decade, due to the widening scope of sustainability from environmental to social and economic, creating BREEAM-Communities and LEED-ND (Villanueva and Horan, 2018). As such, the inability of building assessment tools to address abstract and community-based elements such as connectivity and transport infrastructure and urban form as well as principles like the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE), led invariably to the development of NSATs (Sharifi and Murayama, 2014b).…”

A multi-dimensional energy-based analysis of neighbourhood sustainability assessment tools: are institutional indicators really missing?

“…However, there seems to be a lack of consistency of what exactly the institutional dimension is or consists of, making it difficult to define institutional indicators. Secondly, authors such as Villanueva and Horan (2018), Komeily and Srinivasan (2015), Murayama (2014), andTurcu (2013) do not explicitly mention the precise criteria that have been explored to conclude on the missing institutional indicators. Furthermore, it would seem that a specific HSI can also bear multiple dimensional traits as suggested in Turcu (2013) and Dawodu et al,( 2017) suggesting that an institutional indicator could be an indicator that possesses not only the institutional dimension but other dimensions simultaneously.…”

“…Also, results of several studies on NSATs highlight the dominance of the environmental dimension. There is also a narrow view of what is considered to be an institutional dimension leading to possible incomplete or incoherent results of the impacts of the institutional dimension (Ameen et al, 2015;Berardi, 2015;Komeily and Srinivasan, 2015;Reith and Orova, 2015;Sharifi and Murayama, 2013;Turcu, 2013;Villanueva and Horan, 2018). The next section aims to establish consistent parameters that can be used to determine if indicators bear institutional characteristic and also utilise a multi-dimensional approach to investigate the possibility of multidimensional institutional indicators.…”

“…The next paragrapgh illustrates how the dimensions of sustainability were obtained for the energy-based indicators. Further examples can be seen in studies by both Dawodu et al, (2017) and Villanueva and Horan (2018). Invariably, each E-HSI is placed under a specific identified dimension of sustainability.…”

“…Yet, challenges still exist as regards to dimensions of sustainability, institutional dimension and NSATs. Several studies that have investigated NSATs, generally argue a lack of coverage of the institutional dimension (Boyle et al, 2018;Sharifi and Murayama, 2013;Villanueva and Horan, 2018). However, there has not been an explicit mention of the kinds of specific indicators and criteria sought out to make this claim, rather vague terminologies are used: (1) In the study of five assessment tools, Komeily and Srinivasan (2015, p. 35) states that "Institutional category is the least emphasised category.…”