Sustainable Development: why planners and developers disagree

1. Sustainable Development:why planners and developers disagree Yvonne Rydin Bartlett School of Planning University College London

2. The issue • Why are urban planners and developers not working together to promote sustainable urban development?

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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.

13. Thank you! Y.Rydin@ucl.ac.uk

14. Background on the SD concept Two ways of understanding the concept • “meeting people’s 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

15. 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

16. How to handle the SD concept • Search for win-win outcomes; don’t 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