ABSTRACT
In the classic sustainable development model, it is customary to assess design performance using metrics for identifying and evaluating criteria as though they exist in independent silos of interest, e.g., at economic, environmental, social, and even cultural levels. This can create anomalies, conflicts, or dysergies if the criteria used are incommensurate or in competition with one another. Pressures to fulfil economic development goals may, for example, conflict with the need to improve environmental health. When this happens, it can lead to missed opportunities for both the community and the environment. The chapter explores key performance rating systems and projects by urban designers and landscape architects to show that comprehensive and aggregated performance evaluation standards can have a net benefit if combined creatively to produce new interdependent synergies. These can include the inferential fostering of new and mutually beneficial relationships among stakeholders which, in turn, may lead to further synergies.
