ABSTRACT
Cities and urban environments are fast becoming the dominant human habitat and their impact on the local and global environment is significant. This chapter places environmental masterplanning into the realm of urban systems. It considers how the development of strategies for a range of interacting urban elements, such as energy, water, waste, place making, transport, and ecology for the urban community form, can help to achieve more 'sustainable' urban environments. Environmental masterplanning is framed within an interdisciplinary context that attempts to address sustainability by harnessing the skills of those disciplines working at a masterplan scale. The chapter outlines the need to consider the contextual issues of a given urban area that can inform the development of a vision for the masterplan. As part of the initial strategy development process, a set of objectives should be set out in response to the site context and to the vision statement.
