Sustainable Urban Development Volume 4

Changing Professional Practice

Ian Cooper, Martin Symes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415438216
• eBook ISBN: 9781134071715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This new book explores how the professions responsible for enhancing the built environment's sustainability seek to deliver this new agenda, offering multi-perspective case studies and discussion to argue for a rethinking of the role of urban development professional.

Showing how sustainability is rapidly becoming the norm for practitioners, the authors consider new types of professional knowledge, relationships between planning systems and property development, links between public and private sector organisations, ideas about long term responsibilities and new working practices for engaging with the public.

1
Introduction

Ian Cooper and Martin Symes

This book is about the transition to sustainability. Specifically, it discusses ways in which professionals responsible for the production and operation of the built environment are responding to the pressure to make urban development more sustainable. At the heart of this process lies an ability to transform new knowledge about the impact of changing the built environment into practical action. The expertise required is largely in the hands of professionals and, although there is a market for this service, government is responsible for promoting its use and effective application. The general population, present and future, will feel the impact of its quality. The relationships between the market, government, the professions and the public are crucial and need to be rethought carefully—not least because of the new forms of governance that sustainable development may require.

This is the fourth volume in a series on sustainable urban development. The series is based on experience in the European Union and has been stimulated by BEQUEST, a research network funded by the European Commission to build a common assessment framework and vocabulary for professionals involved in the production of the built environment. Earlier volumes in the series have emphasised the urban environmental, economic and social objectives of sustainable development, published detailed critiques of assessment methods which may be used in spatial planning and construction project implementation. They have also provided case study descriptions of a number of major developments in which sustainability has been sought. This new volume focuses on a multidisciplinary debate about the continuing process of professionalising the relevant knowledge. It is critical that the information required for designing for sustainable development is fully absorbed into everyday practice. To support discussion of what is required, examples of changes which have occurred so far are drawn from a number of European countries.

This volume includes reports of original research which explores the variety of ways in which professional practice is changing in response to new criteria and new methodologies. It points to a ‘new professionalism’ that is becoming established. It asks whether this will emerge simply by incorporating new ideas within existing professions or through the rise of new professional identities to challenge existing ones. For, as this volume indicates, sustainable urban development can no longer be treated as an exception to the rules and regulations which govern the planning, development and design of construction projects: just a response that requires additions to existing professional agendas. Rather, new norms are emerging with variations in the way they are developing in different parts of the European Union. Much of the new form of practice is held in common. And this newly emerging consensus will have implications beyond just adding a few extra criteria to an already extensive list of project requirements.

A SOCIAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

One of the main arguments of this book is that the problems raised by transforming knowledge into action are not only technical but also economic and social, hence making new demands on professional culture. Of course, there is new information to be absorbed, but even this can founder on traditional approaches to knowledge management, which often involve combining a loose understanding of the relevant science with an emphasis on the use of tacit knowledge. The working methods used in a development process by its client and design team are also frequently unclear. For example, a rift can emerge between participants whose aim is to find new solutions to a given task and those who limit themselves to modifying a tried and tested approach.

One basic problem is that of aiming for sustainable development while adhering to a traditional view of professional behaviour and decision-making, since these are based on service to a particular client, with only a very general sense of responsibility for the economic and social impact on a wider community. For development to be sustainable the reverse must become the case. Broad impacts must come first, and individual benefits follow. Unfortunately this sense of priorities usually cuts across the reward structure of the development and construction industries, with their traditional professional territories and current division of labour. The status quo is being questioned by the new actors emerging, especially those from the voluntary sector, with different expectations of who should do what and how the costs and benefits should be distributed. The established professions must respond.

A number of difficult questions need to be raised about the attempt to define the knowledge which is relevant to sustainable development. There are also interesting questions to be considered about the forms of professionalism in current practice. After addressing these questions, this introduction lists a selection of probable technical and socio-economic barriers to the professionalisation of the knowledge required for sustainable development. There then follows a series of questions about the processes of change which may be required. Since local detail is added and discussed in the case-based chapters (Parts I and II of the book), a brief description of each of these is then included. An attempt to draw the multifaceted strands of theory and practice explored throughout the book together is made in the concluding chapter.

QUESTIONS CONCERNING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

A major challenge for redefining professionalism in this field is that knowledge about sustainable development remains contested. Hence the discussion in the first of the volumes in this series bears summarising here.

The foundations of concern for the impact of science and technology on the environment were laid by Rachel Carson (1965). Her work focused on problems of the natural environment but introduced many of the solutions which are promoted today in the broader context of concern for the human-made environment. These include: the need to conserve species variety, the need to approach changing natural processes with caution, the need to avoid taking calculated risks and the need to consider who has the right to make decisions which affect the future. The term sustainable development, which refocused the debate on the economic and social purposes of applying science to environmental problems, was coined by Barbara Ward in the mid-1970s (Holmberg and Sandbrook 1992). It has rapidly gained currency in governmental and non-governmental circles concerned with the changing quality of life. Dickens (2004) shows many more recent examples of the way in which our species is now considered to be a part of—rather than outside or above—nature, and how, as society transforms its environment, people’s own natures are being transformed as well. But both the terminology of science and its application can be contested in relation to the production of the built environment, as elsewhere. Of course all science is contested, as the case study by Latour and Woolgar (1986) shows only too clearly. But the situation with the science underlying calls for sustainable development is especially complex.

Pearce et al. (1989) listed more than 60 detailed definitions of the term sustainable development. In an important discussion Beckerman (1994) argued that the technical issues addressed and the value judgements made by proponents of sustainable development are frequently confused with each other. He called for greater clarity in the analysis. Contributing to this latter process, Mitchell (2000: 68, drawing on Mitchell 1999), argued that in practice the various definitions can be summarised with reference to two well-known statements. One is from the World Conservation Union (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), that sustainable development ‘improves the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems’ (IUCN-UNEP-WWF 1991); the other is that sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations’ (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) 1987). This point is also made in Cooper (1997) and Deakin et al. (2001).

The United Nations Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, developed a programme of action, Local Agenda 21 (United Nations 1993). This was followed up with a Habitat Conference in 1996, in which special emphasis fell on the consequences of urban development, both because urban development aims to change the quality of life and because it has environmental impact. The European Council held a major conference of cities and towns in Europe at which the Aalborg Charter (1994) was adopted. This referred among other topics to the need for establishing a strongly participatory process. The European Commission DG XI set up an expert group on the urban environment and this first reported in 1996 (Commission of the European Communities (CEC) 1996). Its conclusions then included the need to integrate economic, social and environmental policy objectives, and stressed the importance of developing an approach to urban management which would emphasis integration and partnership mechanisms.

The decade since 1996 has demonstrated that the broad approach to sustainable development advocated by EU expert group is not easy to implement in everyday political decision-making at any scale. This has often resulted in retreats to addressing specific issues, often a particular scale. For instance, at a national level, the attraction of seeking a focus on the manipulation of one particular indicator can be seen in the British government’s Stern Review (Stern 2006).¹ This focuses on the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on climate change, arguing for an urgent international effort to reduce emissions by

• emissions trading
• technology cooperation
• adaptation of development policy.

This review suggested that the main scientific issues are settled and that we can safely predict rises in temperature (with consequent effects on sea water levels) and urban consequences on this basis. But such information is not always accepted without question. For example Stern (2006) gives the proportions of global emissions which underlie this scenario and appear to have direct impact on town planning as 40 per cent divided as follows:

Land Use	18 per cent
Buildings	8 per cent
Transport	14 per cent

One major criticism that can be made of this influential report recalls Beckermann’s (1994) comments:

in their treatment of climate science the Oxonia papers contain serious gaps and errors; … the science of climate change is still in its infancy and the account given is … questionable, misleading and biased.

(Lavoisier Group, cited by Byatt et al. 2006: 146)

continuing

the treatment extends to economic and statistical aspects [and] presents as valid and authoritative twin sets of results which have been subjected to damaging … criticism … a reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature ‘anomalies’ over the period from AD 1000 [and] projections of greenhouse gas emissions [which are] in large part based on economic analysis [which] there is good reason to query.

(Byatt et al. 2006: 147)

As these comments illustrate, it is important to understand that even at the global scale there is disagreement even about single factor issues such as carbon emissions. In the case of a multi-factor issue like sustainable development, especially when framed at lower (national, regional, local and construction project) scales, disagreements are therefore to be expected. Such disagreement has to be seen, not as an anomaly to be explained away but as an integral part of the ‘picture’ with which professionals are being asked to deal when seeking to adapt their working practices to the new set of challenges.

At the local government scale, the emergence of much stronger levels of concern about environmental quality has already had some impact in most European countries. Following the Rio conference in 1992, local authorities introduced Agenda 21 initiatives, and, depending on national administrative systems, revised their town planning and building control regulations. This has led to the increased use of environmental assessment methods to evaluate the sustainability of urban development (see Volume 3 of this series). Any attempt at configuring a new professionalism in response to sustainable development must take account of the part played by these methodologies in new forms of decision-making and governance. Oestreicher (1995) suggested that this trend will continue, arguing that:

From time immemorial, local communities have been concerned with shaping the … environment … But in view of the threatened balance between the human and the non-human on our planet, we have to … reconsider the foundations of local government.

(Ostreicher 1995: 35)

Mitchell (1999, 2000) sought to address the problems currently experienced by present-day local government officers and others in making the concepts of sustainable development more operational. He showed that measurement issues are significant when debate moves on from scientific discussion to the possibility of corrective action. There has been a rapid expansion in the volume of data available on the performance of ‘human-environment systems’ and the emergence of indicator systems has been extensively discussed, for example, by Bell and Morse (1999). Many of these features were considered in detail in Volume 2 of this series.

In an important review of the literature, Hatfield Dodds (2000) examined the scientific debate over the development of sustainability indicators and identifie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface: A European Perspective
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Changing Processes
• Part II Changing Institutions