ABSTRACT

This ground breaking volume raises radical critiques and proposes innovative solutions for social sustainability in the built environment. Urban Social Sustainability provides an in-depth insight into the discourse and argues that every urban intervention has a social sustainability dimension that needs to be taken into consideration, and incorporated into a comprehensive and cohesive ‘urban agenda’ that is built on three principles of recognition, integration, and monitoring. This should be achieved through a dialogical and reflexive process of decision-making. To achieve sustainable communities, social sustainability should form the basis of a constructive dialogue and be interlinked with other areas of sustainable development. This book underlines the urgency of approaching social sustainability as an urban agenda and goes on to make suggestions about its formulation.

Urban Social Sustainability consists of original contributions from academics and experts within the field and explores the significance of social sustainability from different perspectives. Areas covered include urban policy, transportation and mobility, urban space and architectural form, housing, urban heritage, neighbourhood development, and urban governance. Drawing on case studies from a number of countries and world regions the book presents a multifaceted and interdisciplinary understanding from social sustainability in urban settings, and provides practitioners and policy makers with innovative recommendations to achieve more socially sustainable urban environment.

chapter 1|26 pages

Social sustainability discourse

A critical revisit

chapter 2|15 pages

Social sustainability

Politics and democracy in a time of crisis

chapter 3|17 pages

Urban social sustainability policies in the Nordic region

A repackaging of the welfare state model?

chapter 4|19 pages

Social sustainability and transport

Making ‘smart mobility’ socially sustainable

chapter 5|21 pages

Social sustainability and urban heritage

The challenge of conserving physical places and sustaining cultural traces

chapter 6|26 pages

Spatiality of social sustainability

Social activity and neighbourhood space

chapter 7|24 pages

The social effects of architecture

Built form and social sustainability

chapter 8|22 pages

Social sustainability in eco-urban neighbourhoods

Revisiting the Nordic model

chapter 9|22 pages

Social sustainability and new neighbourhoods

Case studies from Spain and Germany

chapter 10|23 pages

Social sustainability and collaborative housing

Lessons from an international comparative study

chapter 11|15 pages

Social sustainability as an urban agenda

Towards a comprehensive image