The Lack of Certainty

To some degree most, or perhaps all, people desire to be safe, secure and to have control over their environment in order to sustain their regular and habituated ways of life: what the British sociologist Anthony Giddens1 (1991) calls a desire for ‘ontological security’. These concerns apply to all dimensions of the built and natural environment, from issues of our personal physical security, well-being and sense of belonging; through material considerations, such as housing and employment needs; to the protection of our wider heritage and ecology (Brand 1999; Dupuis and Thorns 1998, 2008; Grenville 2007).