Sustainable Development: why planners and developers disagree

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Sustainable Developmentwhy planners and
developers disagree

• Yvonne Rydin
• Bartlett School of Planning
• University College London

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The issue

• Why are urban planners and developers not working
  together to promote sustainable urban development?

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The Urban Planners SD Agenda

• Variable pressure from central government
• Sometimes local political pressure, but
• Local politics also has other priorities
• Tends to prioritise social and economic benefits
• An aspirational agenda, that can seem vague
• Focuses on urban areas so often rather general
• Medium term perspective
• Tends to be technologically ignorant

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The Developers SD Agenda

• Limited market pressure
• Some regulatory pressure, with a strong focus on
  products and building standards
• A pragmatic approach that tends to prioritise the
  economic
• Usually project or site focused, and only for a
  limited time period
• Tendency to concentrate on what can be routinely
  and safely delivered (as opposed to what is
  technologically possible)

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An Relationship of Tension

• Urban planning often puts planners and developers
  in opposition to each other
• May disagree about kind of urban development for
  an area
• Even if both parties want the same development,
  planners usually want more social (or
  environmental) gains out of it

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A Relationship of Tension

• Local vision and variety is at the core of urban
  planning
• This can look like an uneven playing field to
  developers involving time and costs
• There is a fundamentally different attitude to
  regulation
• Regulation is key element of urban planning
• Regulation seen as killing innovation by industry

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The Way Forward (1)

• Developing on a larger scale
• Provides the opportunity for co-planning an area
• Teams can build communities of practice
• Shown to be the best way to learn through doing
• But environmental sustainability may not be
  prioritised

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The Way Forward (2)

• Enhance the knowledge base of planners and
  developers
• Particularly need to target smaller builders
• Need to link urban design to the potential of
  environmental building technology
• This could enable dialogue rather than yes/no
  conversations or a slide to the lowest common
  denominator

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The Way Forward (3)

• SD needs to be core to the planning framework at
  a higher tier than the local level this means
  both the national and regional levels
• Sweden dialogue between developers and
  government agencies suggests that changes in the
  planning system at national level may be traded
  off for increasing the sustainability of new
  buildings

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The Way Forward (4)

• Need a long term framework for sustainable
  construction technology
• Fiscal measures providing incentives for
  developing higher environmentally performing
  buildings
• Technology forcing regulation including Building
  Regulations
• A labour market strategy, including training

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The Way Forward (5)

• Consumer acceptance needs to be turned into
  consumer pressure
• Energy certification may influence markets at the
  margin
• Sweden - idea of linking environmental
  performance of buildings to the annual property
  tax this would feed through to the market

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Cautious optimism

• There is potential for urban planners and
  developers to work together on the sustainability
  agenda, but..
• We need to think outside the box of current
  systems and ways of doing urban planning and
  development.

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Thank you!

• Y.Rydin_at_ucl.ac.uk

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Background on the SD concept

• Two ways of understanding the concept
• meeting peoples needs today and in the future
  i.e. looking towards future generations and the
  world they will inherit
• Combining the economic, social and environmental
  i.e. delivering on all three fronts at the same
  time if possible

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Problems with the SD concept

• It is waffle it can mean everything and nothing
• It is too easy to buy into like motherhood and
  apple pie
• It pretends that win-win-win scenarios are
  always possible
• economic environmental social wins

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How to handle the SD concept

• Search for win-win outcomes dont let the best
  be the enemy of the good
• Be honest on what is being prioritised and how
  trade-offs are occurring we gave up this
  environmental benefit for this reason
• Think at least medium or even long term find the
  long term economic benefits of social and
  environmental outcomes