Author(s)

G C Magnoli, R D Talbot, R Atkins, G Ferrari, K M Shah & T Chong

Abstract

This paper intends to explore the relationship between the built environment and social sustainability. It is based on both the authors’ experiences of developing a sustainable development strategy for the City of Edinburgh and the work carried out by students in the Course \“Sustainable Cities” (University of Edinburgh, UK - Department of Architecture 2001). The teaching explored some of the paradoxes inherent in the idea of social sustainability and suggested how some new approaches to the planning of public urban space can lead to a reengineering of the city and the realisation of what the authors call the sustainability potential of urban living. This paper offers a conceptual framework for urban planning and the formation of public space in which social inclusion is accepted as an integral condition of sustainable development. The work advocates a planning system which seeks to bring together the social, economic and environmental components of sustainability and which recognises the critical importance: of public space to the processes of social learning, public participation, social inclusion and social integration - all vital processes for enabling a city to realise its full sustainability potential.

Keywords