Sustainable Urban Development The Framework and Directory of Assessment Methods

Abstract

Sustainable development is an issue that has attracted a considerable amount of academic interest since the publication of the Brundtland Report. With Agenda 21, it is an issue which has also found its way into the policy and action programmes of the European Commission. For Europe and its member states, the issue has become one of sustainable urban development and this paper reports on the interim findings of a concerted action programme undertaken to foreground the urban question, develop a framework for the analysis of sustainable development and compile a directory of methods to assess the sustainability of urban development. It classifies the assessment methods in question and goes on to map their applications across the sustainable development issues represented in the framework for analysis. Having done this, the paper goes on to set out how the said methods are being used to build the environmental capacity that is needed for the city of tomorrow to carry its cultural heritage and develop forms of human settlement which are sustainable.