Assessing urban sustainability from a social democratic perspective: a thematic approach

Abstract

Conventional typologies that seek to categorise indicators of urban sustainability tend to draw upon the neoliberal, silo approach for conceptualising sustainability, which positions sustainability as having economic, social and environmental dimensions. This approach has been critiqued for its inability to account for challenges to sustainability arising from interactions between social, economic and environmental variables. Models that are incapable of assessing dimensional interactions and their collective outcomes are also incapable of providing critiques that address entrenched structural challenges to sustainability. This paper proposes a new thematic approach based on Australian research to classify indicators for urban sustainability. The proposed approach shifts the categorisation of indicators from a neoliberal ontology to a social democratic foundation by proposing a model for assessing urban development relational to themes of amenity, accessibility, equity and environmental performance relative to resource conservation. The proposed approach is intended to be sensitive to integrating social, economic and environmental considerations with land use planning to improve the natural and built environments of communities.

A Systematic Review of Urban Sustainability Assessment Literature

“…The literature points out that sustainability dimensions (i.e., three pillars plus additionally proposed dimensions) present a common framing for sustainability indicator selection [9,10,22]. Table 4 supports this claim, showing that 22 studies applied a three pillars framework and 26 organized around environmental and social sustainability.…”

“…This was not a surprising finding, as the general literature on urban sustainability assessment acknowledges that this is the most typical approach [9,[21][22][23]. Although the indicator-based framework is the most common analytical tool, one should not necessarily blindly apply such an assessment protocol for future studies, as there are concerns in the literature that this approach is too often not grounded in clear sustainability principles and that indicators for urban sustainability assessment should be selected and organized through a more integrative perspective [6,10,24].…”

“…Urban sustainability is one topic area to which sustainability assessment is being applied, and urban sustainability assessment is a quickly growing subfield of sustainability assessment (see [9,10]); however, the literature is more developed for sustainability assessment in generic terms (see [5,6]) as well as in application to other areas of focus. This paper seeks to better understand how one might operationalize urban sustainability assessment to guide sustainable urban development.…”

Applying the Holistic Conceptual Conservation Framework for Sustainable Tourism

“…Equity has an intergenerational dimension, implying a concern with the distribution of resources available to current and future generations (Davidson, Kellett, Wilson, & Pullen, 2012). A social democratic approach to sustainability is necessarily predicated on an explicit set of values such as social justice, equity and environmental quality (Davidson, Kellett, Wilson, & Pullen, 2012, p. 63).…”

“…The HCCF places a strong emphasis on the importance of social justice, equity, and natural capital. It seeks to better balance considerations of economic sustainability with social justice and equity, and sustainable environmental outcomes, while maintaining economic efficiency (Davidson, Kellett, Wilson, & Pullen, 2012). Huckle (2014) suggested that scholars could establish valid pathways to a common future along a broader direction that leads not only to sustainability but also to greater democracy and justice.…”