ABSTRACT
In drawing attention to Mitchell et al.’s (1995) and May et al.’s (1997) environmental assessment, Cooper (1997) proposes that if we are to bridge the gap between buildings and cities and evaluate the sustainability of urban development, it will be necessary to compile an extensive list of environmental assessment methods: a list of methods able to operate at various levels of assessment-from building to city scale-and not just with the environmental, but also the economic and social issues underlying the evaluation process (see also Cooper and Curwell 1998; Curwell et al. 1998; Nijkamp and Pepping 1998). In the interests of compiling such a list of assessment methods, Cooper (1997) and Cooper and Curwell (1998) propose that the evaluations in question should be able to engage the ‘pole of actors’ in the built environment and meet the demands which exist for cities to be sustainable in terms of:
• the ecological integrity of the built environment; • the equity of the economic and social structures underlying the city; • the ability the public in turn have to participate in decisions taken about the future of the
urban development process.
