evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough?

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This article was downloaded by: [Tufts University] On: 08 October 2014, At: 08:12 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Building Research & Information Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbri20 Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough? Mark Deakin a a School of the Built Environment , Napier University , Edinburgh, UK E-mail: Published online: 03 Feb 2007. To cite this article: Mark Deakin (2005) Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough?, Building Research & Information, 33:5, 476-480, DOI: 10.1080/09613210500218925 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613210500218925 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough?

This article was downloaded by: [Tufts University]On: 08 October 2014, At: 08:12Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Building Research & InformationPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbri20

Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical frameworkenough?Mark Deakin aa School of the Built Environment , Napier University , Edinburgh, UK E-mail:Published online: 03 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Mark Deakin (2005) Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough?, Building Research &Information, 33:5, 476-480, DOI: 10.1080/09613210500218925

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613210500218925

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophical framework enough?

Evaluating sustainability: is a philosophicalframeworkenough?

Mark Deakin

Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built EnvironmentPeter S.Brandon andPatrizia Lombardini

Blackwell,Oxford,UK, 2005,288 pages, ISBN 0 632 06486 2

This book will be of interest to academics andpractitioners working on sustainable development-related issues. For researchers, it introduces a numberof new and challenging concepts. For practitioners,there are a number of case studies setting out thepractical nature of the integrating mechanism, frame-work and assessment methods the authors advancefor evaluating sustainable development. In thisrespect, the book deserves to be read and warrantsserious attention from policy-makers, consultants andpractitioners alike because the text has the nerve totackle some of the most pressing questions currentlybeing asked about the sustainability of the builtenvironment.

In the Preface, the authors state:

This book is just a beginning. It seeks to addressthe issues related to the evaluation of sustainabledevelopment within the built environment andprovide a way forward. It is about how we canrecognise, structure and assess all of those factorsthat affect whether a development is sustainable

in the medium to long term. It is also about howwe try to balance these factors and how this con-tributes to our understanding of sustainability. Itis not exhaustive as the authors’ believe there isstill much to learn and to develop, but it is hopedthat it will provide another step towards a betterapproach to the subject.

Having laid down the terms of reference for the book,the authors go on to set out what the text focuses on.They suggest it focuses on two things:

. how to create a knowledge of sustainable develop-ment that is rich enough to engage stakeholders inthe process and get them to make a meaningfulcontribution

. how to assess our progress made in movingtowards such a state of affairs

Focusing on these two questions, the authors beginChapter 1 by setting out the context of their study.Here attention is drawn to the ‘environmental perspec-tive’ on sustainable development, the internationalpolicy debate circulating around the BrundtlandReport and Rio Earth Summit, and the extension ofthese concerns over climate change, resource consump-tion and ecological damage into the built environment.The authors then offer a working definition of sustain-able development drawn form Brundland’s statementon intergenerational equity and the report’s proposalto move towards this through ‘a process of change’,whereby some kind of harmony is restored betweenthe natural and human world.

Chapter 2 sets out the approaches that currently existto evaluate the sustainability of such developments

BUILDING RESEARCH & INFORMATION (2005) 33(5), 476–480

Building Research & Information ISSN 0961-3218 print ⁄ISSN 1466-4321 online # 2005 Taylor & Francishttp: ⁄ ⁄www.tandf.co.uk ⁄journals

DOI: 10.1080/09613210500218925

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and here attention is drawn to ‘natural step’, Hart’s(1999) ‘community capital’ and Wackernagel andRees’s (1995) ‘ecological footprints’ as responses tothe threat climate change poses and as an indicationof what action needs to betaken in order for stake-holders to manage such change. Addressing thisquestion, the authors draw attention to the interge-nerational and, therefore, medium- to long-termnature of sustainable development. Suggesting thisdefining quality of sustainable development is some-thing that tends to be missed in existing models, theauthors go on to drawn particular attention to ‘time’and the way in which it is traditionally dealt with bythose stakeholders responsible for managing change.

In Chapter 3, the authors focus on ‘time and sustain-ability’ stating:

Strangely, it [time] appears not to be somethingthat is a major issue in the literature on thesubject. It is hidden from view, but it is animplicit assumption in many of the techniquesemployed.

Latching on to this observation, the authors drawattention to the critical insights of Brand (2000) andgo on to sketch out a framework of innovation andstability, entropy and critical failure points in the lifecycle of entities. However, they also acknowledge thecritical significance that net present values, discountrates and internal rates of return still have in reprodu-cing the tendencies towards the kind of future aversionthat is neither clever nor wise, undermining the long-term perspective and idea of sustainable developmentwhich is intergenerational in nature.

Having set out the first four chapters, the authors arriveat a critical juncture in the text. As they state:

The lack of an agreed structure that can helpdecision making process achieve greater sustain-ability is a major problem. This chapter suggestsan integrating mechanism, or framework whichcould bring together the diversity of interestsnecessary.

(p. 76)

Chapter 4 suggests an integrating mechanism orframework that could bring together the diversity ofinterests which does exist and suggest that a philoso-phical underpinning for this can be found in the workof the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyerweerd, whodeveloped a ‘Theory of the Cosmonomic Idea ofReality’ (Dooyerweerd, 1955). To quote the authors,they advise us:

This theory attempts to integrate all of theaspects of the universe in a meaningful form tohelp explain structure and relationships in a

holistic way. At the very least it provides a check-list of things to examine in order to establishwhether a development is sustainable. At best itprovides a means of explaining the interdepen-dence between aspects of the urban environmentand can be linked to a wider sustainable develop-ment agenda. Its holism allows an integrated viewof the issue and also assists in explaining what ismeant by, and what contributes to, sustainabledevelopment.

(p. 77)

While not stated by the authors, the object of thisframework is fivefold:

. to develop a new way of thinking about sustainabledevelopment

. to base this on modes of thinking, which areimbued with meaning

. to use this meaning as a means of defining the issuesat stake when considering whether a developmentis sustainable and if it can pass this test

. to use this in turn as a means of collaborating withothers ‘championing’ this cause

. to building consensus on the actions to be takenand what should be done to make developmentsustainable

With this aim, the authors then set out how the builtenvironment can be explained by Dooyerweerd’smodalities and present a multimodal framework fordecision-makers carrying the responsibility formaking development sustainable – in this instanceplanners and urban designers. This examinationsubsequently culminates with the presentation of a‘proposed framework for sustainable urban develop-ment decision making’.

Conscious of this rereading of Dooyerweerd’sphilosophy, the presentation of its modalities as aframework for evaluating sustainable development ishighly revisionist in tone. Chapter 5 examines itsvalue in the context of three case studies. As theauthors state:

This chapter aims to show the robustness, rel-evance, comprehensiveness and flexibility of theproposed multi-modal framework throughsome case study applications. The real worldexamples are provided which are related tovarious planning/design contexts and differentoperative levels. These are intended to demon-strate that the framework is able to make thesekey issues within the decision making processexplicit and transparent in the context of

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sustainable development and that it is able tocover a wide range of issues that are rarelyaddressed by current methods.

(p. 100)

. case studies are about decisions relating to thelocation of a municipal waste treatment system

. use of multiple stakeholder groups in an urbanregeneration proposal

. social reporting as part of a commitment to partici-patory democracy in planning and urban design

The case studies highlight the need for robust methodsto assess the ‘sustainability of urban development’ andthis becomes the object of interest in Chapter 6. Inmany ways, the layout of this issue mirrors theapproach the authors have taken in the previous fivechapters. First they map out the issues and the state-of-the-art on assessment methods, they then classifytheir evaluations of sustainable development andexamine how they have been applied in the builtenvironment (Deakin et al., 2002a, b). Having donethis, they offer another Doyerweerdian-inspiredrevision of the material. Here the assessment methodsare mapped against the 15 modalities of the integrativemechanism and cross-referenced against the areas andcapitals making up this framework. This results in themethods being classified as pre- and post-Brundtlandassessment methods.

The results of this mapping are interesting because theyare roughly identical in terms of the modalities theauthors address in the previous chapter on evaluatingthe sustainability of development and add little bythe way of critical insight into the assessmentprocess. According to the authors, this is because theassessment methods are either overtly economistic orreductionalist and fail to deal with the human andinstitutional aspects of the framework ‘they’ advancefor evaluating the sustainability of development.

Chapter 7 turns to the ‘management systems andprotocols’ that can begin to overcome the gaps in theassessment methods and their inability to cover thehuman and institutional issues seen as criticallyimportant to any evaluation of sustainable develop-ment. Reflecting on how to go about integrating suchissues into an evaluation, the authors suggest theprerequisite for this is to recognize that ‘everyonemanages’ and to adopt the Senge (1999)-inspiredapproach to organizational learning. This, in turn,leads to the authors adopting a Checkland andScholes (1999)-type ‘soft systems [assessment] method-ology’, covering human and institutional issues andwhat they refer to as a ‘process protocol’ for evaluatingsustainable development.

From here the authors move onto ‘future issues’ thatneed to be addressed and the development of a‘research agenda’ with the capacity required to dealwith them. The resulting research agenda is fourfoldand is aimed at the following:

. testing the integrating mechanism and frameworkpresented

. testing the aforesaid across international bound-aries and its relevance for policy-making in thefields of environment and climate

. placing the question of assessment methods at thecentre of this framework and methodology forevaluating the sustainability of development

. developing a protocol capable of evaluating thesustainability of development at different scales ofanalysis

From this review, it is evident the text covers a lot ofground and only proposes to provide a ‘grounding’ inthe issues, many of which the authors acknowledgedeserve a volume in their own right. So where doesthe main focus of the book rest? In answering thisquestion, it is evident the main substantive contri-bution lies with the text’s integrating mechanism orframework. It is, in fact, all pervasive and omnipresentin everything the authors address.

What the authors have done is hit upon a philosophythat is not Kantian in the sense of being categorical,but polymorphous. Not singular, but manifold in theway it attempts to value the reality of everyday life.As a consequence, there is more bridging, bracingand bonding in this book than one might expect fromeither Putnam’s (2000) or Halpern’s (2004) accountsof the human and institutional qualities of socialcapital. However, the key thing to bear in mind withthe authors’ ‘bridging’ exercises is that all of the‘bracing’ and ‘bonding’ going on in the name of sus-tainable development take place under a philosophicalframework that is deeply suspicious of science andtechnology. Furthermore, if one was to considerwhere their real concern lies, it can clearly be seen torest with a particular scientific ideology, vis-a-vis posi-tivism. In particular with the branch of ‘nomological-deductivism’ that has given birth to the science ofsocial engineering and techniques, which it hasspawned as part of the post-war consensus. Theconsensus, it might be added, that has been complicitin producing the environmental crisis that reflects sobadly on the human condition and the institutionsresponsible for it.

While the stance taken by the authors is understand-able, the difficulty readers who share their sentimentswill have is with the way this particular field of

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science and technology is brought to account. This isbecause the authors’ account of the current imbalancein the philosophy of science and technology might beaccused of bending the stick too far back in favour ofphilosophy at the expense of science and technology –be it physical, or social – and in this respect be seenas placing far too much faith in the redemptivequalities of the former and not enough in the latter. Ifthis was to be the message conveyed, it would be unfor-tunate. This is because the authors merely want thephilosophical position they adopt to act as a filterthrough which to read the scientific and technicalissues and to provide a lens for bringing the rich multi-tude of meanings their own critical insights offer intosharper definition.

While this is clearly what is going on, the strong philo-sophical underpinnings of the text means any attemptto evaluate the sustainability of development by refer-ence to the modalities the authors set out is notwithout its own difficulties. The modalities adoptedas the basis for the integrating mechanism are notself-evident and cannot be simply ‘read off’ as the ‘setof guidelines’ the authors suggest they represent.Anyone interested in the subject and seeking to usethese modalities will not find them set in the everydaylanguage of planning or urban design. Therefore,while the vocabulary might be philosophicallygrounded, the framework may not sit easily with thescientific and technical community in either purelyprocedural or more substantive terms. It may also beless than clear about how those ‘grass-routes’ environ-mentalists tackling Agenda 21 issues can make use of itas part of their take on ecological modernization.Therefore, in this sense there is a real possibility themessage the authors want to convey might be lost,simply because the stakeholders they are trying toreach find the language and vocabulary too remotefor the framework to be of practical value.

This preoccupation with the framework also meanslittle is offered by the way of assessment methods forevaluating sustainable development. Even while theauthors acknowledge followers of the ‘co-evolutionaryapproach’ to sustainable development share many oftheir own values, the impression the reader is leftwith is that none of the assessment methods associatedwith this school of thought manages to meet the frame-work’s specific requirement and need to be revised –both procedurally and substantially – if they are tomeet the challenge this poses. The question posed inresponse might reasonably be as follows. Can anyassessment method achieve such a high level of inte-gration, does not their value lie in the fact they offerprocedures to guide evaluation exercises at muchlower levels than this? Furthermore, it might beargued that perhaps the lesson which one needs tolearn is that irrespective of what moral call is put onthe value of this, that and the other, philosophy

cannot help at this lower level because it does nothave the technical means (procedures or substance)required to assess what it contributes to sustainabledevelopment.

Those members of the scientific and technical commu-nity engaged in developing the science and technologyof assessment methods no doubt would agree with thisstatement. What is more, they would probably want toadd that it is not philosophical frameworks, but assess-ment methods and their science and technology, thatprovide the tools required to engage stakeholderswhere it ‘really’ matters, i.e. at the front line. Thatis to say at the front end, where the issues thatone wants to tackle are more sharply defined thananywhere else!

The preoccupation with using philosophy to bypassscience and technology en-route to and, what is inthis instance a direct line to management, ignoresthis, and as a result the reason for approaching theevaluation of sustainable development in this way isnot as clear as it ought to be. This in turn raises thequestion about whether this preoccupation with man-agement is just a clever way of dealing with thefront-end expectations of stakeholders, or if it hasbeen adopted as a means of drawing attention toback-office issues involved in the planning and urbandesign of the built environment? Whatever thereason, the reader is left thinking that the authors’ pre-occupation with management issues tends to end up‘managing down’ expectations and doing so at therisk of merely reproducing the status quo they havesought to bring into question.

This is mentioned because while the request for all ofus to collaborate and build consensus on what ismeant by sustainable development is most welcome,it is not clear how the ‘learning organizations’ calledfor will integrate the multitude of stakeholders theydraw attention to, or manage their expectations inthe ‘process protocol’ they outline for us to followin undertaking assessments. While the authors tendto acknowledge this in Chapter 8 with their discus-sions on the visioning studies, stakeholder partici-pation and future-proofing currently underway inVancouver, this again is only done to bestow the hol-istic virtues of the ‘integrating mechanism’ and not to‘frame’ either the formal procedural logic or the sub-stantive content of the issues that are in the balanceand which are in the process of being ‘worked out’in these assessments. To achieve this ‘balance’ oneneeds to keep one’s feet firmly on the ground andreach down from the cosmos towards more earthlymatters. More earthly matters involve questionsabout how to balance the natural habitat of humansettlement with the institutions of the built environ-ment. One needs to make sure that questions whichsurface about how to value such matters are firmly

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rooted in the ecological integrity and equity of thebuilt environment. In this way, one can do morethan just bear ‘in mind’ the human and institutionalissues of sustainable development and can insteadkeep the ecological integrity and equity of all thosewho inhabit the institutions making up the builtenvironment firmly in sight and where they belong.That is to say, as matters that are of materialconcern to everyone, not least because the humanqualities of these institutions have, above all others,a real impact upon our quality of life.

So, on to the big question. Is this inability to engagewith the procedural logic and substantive content ofthe issues that are in the balance a tactical error, aresult of the research strategy the authors adopt, orthe product of something more fundamental? Put inslightly different terms: is the lack of procedural gui-dance and substantive content a practical oversight,methodological error or something of greater signifi-cance? The reviewer would suggest the problem reflectssomething more fundamental about the frameworkand rests with the philosophical underpinningsadopted by the authors. The philosophical underpin-nings that give rise to the age-old problem of liberaldoctrine and surfaces in terms of the framework’ssubjectification of value without the commensuratestandard of measure needed to qualify it objectivelyand give things the shared meaning they require. Theproblem with this is that the values that the frameworkholds up are not manifest in objects, i.e. they are notmanifest in objects to the point whereby the value ofthe things being assessed are meaningful to othersand are shared, in turn, across communities.

When philosophy has previously tried to provide suchshared meanings, it has failed, turned in on itself andended up as aesthetics, focusing on the human con-dition, losing sight of the political institutions under-pinning them. This is something the authors seem tobe conscious of in their discussions of measurementand performance standards, but reluctant to clear upin terms of offering an explanation for how the Doyer-weerdian cosmology manages to turn this tendency onits head. Adding to, rather than taking away from,finding, as opposed to losing, the value of whatthings mean in terms of their human rather than theirpolitical institutionalization.

If this is what the authors believe, then they need tomake this clear because it is generally recognized thatin this era it is not the job of philosophy, aesthetics oreven political institutions to proceed formally with

such a line of enquiry. On the contrary, the job ofsearching for and working out the substantive contentof the values that are ‘in the balance’ is left to scienceand technology. This is because while it might beliberal democratic doctrines that give us our philos-ophy, aesthetics and politics, it is science and technol-ogy that provide the measures needed to objectify thevalue of things these produce and, in turn, standardizewhat they mean to us as members of the public.However, as other leading researchers on sustainabledevelopment have also now begun to draw upon theDoyerweerdian cosmology as a framework for theirown more scientific and technological examinations,this tendency towards the subjectivication of value (inthe process of assessment) is perhaps a matter callingout for more urgent attention (Nijkamp, in press).

Hopefully, this review of the authors’ work has gonesomeway to set out what is at stake here and leftthe reader in no doubt about why the evaluationof sustainable development is a matter of particularimportance.

Mark DeakinSchool of the Built Environment, Napier University,

Edinburgh, [email protected]

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sibility, Basic, New York.Checkland, P. and Scholes, J. (1999) Soft SystemsMethodology in

Action, Wiley, Chichester.Deakin, M., Huovila, P., Rao, S., Sunikka, M. and Vrekeer, R.

(2002a) The assessment of sustainable urban development.Building Research & Information, 30(2), 95–107.

Deakin, M., Curwell, S. and Lombardi, P. (2002b) Sustainableurban development: the framework and directory of assess-ment methods. Journal of Environmental AssessmentPolicy and Management, 4(2), 171–191.

Dooyerweerd, H. (1955) ANewCritique of Theoretical Thought,4 vols, Presbyterian & Reformed, Philadelphia, PA.

Halpern, D. (2004) Social Capital, Polity, Bristol.Hart, M. (1999) Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators,

Hart Environmental Data, North Andover.Nijkamp, P. (in press) The role of evaluation in supporting human

sustainable development: a cosmonomic perspective, inM. Deakin, Nijkamp, P. and Mitchell, G. (eds): SustainableUrban Development: The Environmental AssessmentMethods, Routledge, London (in press).

Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival ofAmerican Community, Simon & Schuster, New York.

Senge, P. (1999) The Fifth Discipline. Doubleday, New York.Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W. (1995) Our Ecological Footprint,

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