Social Aspects of Sustainability

The Sustainability and Social Inclusion Research Project is meant to articulate with the City of Fort Collins' own emphasis on social sustainability by investigating patterns of citizen participation in (and assessing who appears to benefit from) the social, economic, and environmental “goods” that are imagined to be the desired outcomes of local sustainability planning and development.

Teaching about sustainability through North-South school partnerships inevitably brings students into contact, directly or indirectly, with the ‘Other’ and there is an urgent need to develop an ethical approach to this work in order to avoid repeating patterns of thought and action that are redolent of colonialism. Adopting an ethical approach to teaching about sustainability is a highly complex matter. Acknowledging that issues are complex is not just a matter of supplementing a standard curriculum with representative samplings from other points of view (e.g. through North-South school partnerships). It requires a fundamental rethink of the nature of education, curriculum and pedagogy and a willingness to not only bring difficult issues into the classroom, but also to reflect on one’s own worldview.

The aim of this thesis is to assess how the tourism-based sustainable development strategies as promoted by UNESCO (in)form, affect, and impede development efforts in the management of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Balancing conservation and tourism development creates a variety of opportunities and challenges for heritage sites and local communities that can either improve or reduce the quality of local livelihoods.
By assessing the strategies, efforts and impacts of the two World Heritage Sites in Cape Town - Robben Island and Table Mountain National Park - from a cultural-economic perspective, utilizing the concept of the 'Sustainable Livelihoods Framework for Tourism', I am going to show how and why the (potential) impacts on local livelihoods greatly differ for Robben Island and Table Mountain, although both sites operate within the same legislative, geographic, and infrastructural frameworks.
I will also assess how and why the managers of both World Heritage Sites are presented with different opportunities, as well as with an enormous variety and multiplicity of site-specific challenges for achieving sustainability and improving local livelihoods.
My assessment shows that both WHS are highly aware of their responsibilities and accountability regarding local sustainable development, and that their respective strategies aim at improving sustainability on all spheres. Yet, while Robben Island Museum struggles to fulfill their mandate and legislation, and fail to improve local economies, environments and livelihoods in a sustainable manner, Table Mountain National Park and its affiliates manage to provide a holistic tourism experience while also successfully promoting environmental awareness, socioeconomic development, and inclusive local participation to ensure the long-term improvement of local livelihoods.
The conclusion clearly shows that, although the UNESCO strategy provides a viable framework for developing site-specific strategies that consider the individual aspects of heritage assets, successful implementation depends on a multiplicity of (often intangible and unchangeable) aspects, that require highly individual management approaches and available resources.
This results in the fact, that some sites like Table Mountain National Park have the potential to impact more people with less resources, as compared to sites like Robben Island, who have to invest a lot of resources just to keep operations running.

This research work evaluates the impact of stormwater infiltration on the removal of organics, solids, nitrogen and phosphorus in a LECA-based horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland. Stormwater runoff for the period between January 2008 and June 2010 (30 months) was estimated for the drainage basin of the Vila Fernando wastewater treatment plant (constructed wetland system) and it was observed proportionality between the increase in surface runoff and the infiltration flow rate that reached the plant. The average stormwater infiltration rate that reached the plant was 67.4 m(3) d(-1) (77% of the influent flow rate into the plant). The 30 month monitoring campaign set up at one of the reed beds showed that stormwater infiltration led to a high variation of the hydraulic loading rate (HLR) throughout the bed, which affected its performance in the removal of organic matter, suspended solids and nitrogen. For a HLR below 20 cm d-1 the removal efficiencies for BOD5, COD and TSS doubled. The removal of nitrogen was too low and was associated with the weak development of nitrifying biofilm and the poor growth of reeds. However, it was observed a good relationship between the applied and removed loads for most of the parameters, which seems to indicate that the organic, solid, nitrogen and phosphorus loading rates influenced the respective removal rates. The use of a bed material with high specific surface area, such as LECA, can only improve the treatment capacity of horizontal subsurface flow systems if the organic and solid loading rates, as well as the HLR, can be effectively controlled.

This book chapter is an early version of Cugurullo 2018. Although similar in nature, this chapter explores aspects of experimental urbanism, such as the decomposition of the urban fabric of eco-city projects, which are not discussed in its later incarnation in Environment and Planning A.

This paper discuses the historical development of high rise structure and development of high rise structure in future .This paper tell about some famous high rise structure around the world and some high rise structure in Dubai and Mumbai. The present study highlights the various top rated building .This paper tell about the various aspects associated with the high rise structure, it include infrastructural, social, ecological and economical aspects and their various consequences and consideratio

This thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. This ...

Economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability have been shown to span beyond organizational boundaries, indicating the importance of managing sustainability initiatives across the supply chain. Although scholars and practitioners focus a great deal of attention toward economic and environmental sustainability in supply chains, less attention is paid to social aspects. This is unfortunate, because social sustainability not only plays an important role in enabling other sustainability initiatives, but social injustices in one echelon of a supply chain can lead to significant losses for firms across the chain. Social issues have been especially problematic in developing nations, where abusive labor practices continue to negatively affect trading partners. This research seeks to disambiguate supply chain social sustainability in developing nations by uncovering relevant dimensions of social sustainability and resultant outcomes. Using semi-structured interview data collected from supply chain executives in Indian manufacturing companies, this research uncovers dimensions of social sustainability in terms of not only the focal firm, but also first-tier suppliers and customers. Each of these dimensions is then associated to potential performance outcomes. The findings not only provide a baseline for future research, but help practitioners understand where to focus their attention to enhance social sustainability in their supply chains.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

This article sets out an analytical framework for considering how governments can use their legislative or regulatory powers to ensure business operates on the basis of sustainable models of value creation. Building on the results of comparative company law research, we develop a 'regulatory ecology' of corporate purpose, exploring the interaction of company law with social norms, such as shareholder primacy and sustainability. We focus on a fundamental obstacle to corporate sustainability, namely the dominance of the shareholder primacy norm in the definition of corporate purpose, and consider options for legal reform to place the legal purpose of the corporation on a more sustainable footing.

This study concerns with climate resource management to improve open-field production of tomato in tropical lowlands of Malaysia. The objective was to use a model based approach for identifying optimum combination of growing season and location that is most adapted with different reference borders of temperature, relative humidity and vapor pressure deficit. Data were continuously collected every 60 seconds and for 12 months (January to December, 2014), from two major crop production sites in Seremban and Kota Kinabalu, respectively located in East and West of Malaysia. Interactions between simulated environment and growth responses of tomato were determined by means of an adaptability factor model for the purpose of comparing two locations at different months of year. Results of hypotheses testing that in each location, raw data does not vary with different months were rejected at any significant level, concluding that daily-averaged temperature, relative humidity and vapor pressur...

Review of existing literature suggests that entrepreneurs in modern context often strive for economic sustainability at the expense of social sustainability in societies they operate. The review also suggests that there are alternative contexts, like the context of ethnic communities, where achieving social sustainability is also a primary goal of entrepreneurs. How social sustainability is balanced with economic sustainability within the context of ethnic entrepreneurial communities has not been sufficiently theorized in existing literature. So the aim of this study is to develop a theoretical model grounded in data to explain how this balance can be achieved through socially sustainable entrepreneurship as practiced in ethnic entrepreneurial communities.
To achieve this aim, the study needed data from ethnic entrepreneurial communities which have balanced their economic sustainability with social sustainability for several generations. Three ethnic entrepreneurial communities were selected for data collection namely Memon, Delhi Saudagaran and Chinioti which appeared to have such characteristics. Eisenhardt’s research strategy (ERS) for theory building through comparative case analysis was employed to build cases from the data taken from the three communities and to perform a cross-case comparison to build a theoretical model. The data was taken in the form of in-depth interviews with respondents from each community, notes from direct observation and documentary sources published by each community. Data from each community was interpreted using the social constructivist paradigm. The interpretation of data was utilized to develop three case studies, one for each community. The three cases were then analyzed through a process of constant comparison which involved comparing data within and in between cases. The comparison helped in developing categories of codified data. Each category was further refined into a construct. The constructs and their relationships which were common in the three cases were used to build the theoretical model of socially sustainable entrepreneurship. The model was finally evaluated for external validity by reassessing the proposed constructs and their relationships in the light of existing literature.
The case study developed for each community describes how historically evolved community and family cultures influence and are influenced by the process of starting, maintaining and sustaining a business using community and family resources. The cases also describe the emerging reasons for social disintegration as experienced by the three communities. The common patterns emerging from the comparison of the cases were used to build a theoretical Model of Socially Sustainable Entrepreneurship (MSSE) which highlights the possible socio-cultural contexts, influencers, strategies and socio-economic consequences of socially sustainable entrepreneurship. The model proposes how economic, social and spiritual interdependence between members of the family and community can contribute towards a balance between social and economic sustainability of Muslim-ethnic entrepreneurial communities.
The model can aid policymakers and community leaders to pursue economic sustainability without compromising the social sustainability of their entrepreneurial communities. The results can also contribute towards enhancing the socio-economic sustainability of communities similar to the ones studied for this dissertation. Business schools can also use the results to better explain the socially sustainable form of entrepreneurship to their students as an alternative to entrepreneurial activity in the modern free-market. Students and new entrepreneurs can use the results to strengthen the interdependence between their venture, family and community by striving for the social and economic well-being of all stakeholders as explained in the model. Future research will test the model for statistical generalizability within the three communities. The model once tested may also benefit communities other than the ones studied in this research.

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

Social responsibility, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility are essential practices in sustainably sourced products. The industry leaders in ethical sourcing and sustainable development are paving the way while the followers are lagging; how can the industry continue the upward trend in sourcing ethically and improving sustainability? Gaining brand loyalty and increase of sales while sourcing ethically and sustainably is the emphasis of this research, millennials as sample participants are projected to dominate the workforce by 2020. What are the millennials perspectives on integrating moral values to ensure ethical sourcing and sustainable development? Consumers are now more than ever aware of where products are sourced from, the treatment and living conditions of workers who grow the products, and the use of land without care of sustainability measures. The voluntary ethical sourcing can be linked to company who are moving towards caring for the environment and humanity thus ethical sourcing and maintaining the process has become essential and more especially the millennials who are the focus on this research are ferociously loyal to ethically sourced and sustainable brands.

JEL: L60, L66, L15 N5, Q13, Q50, Q56, Q58, J43 M14, M16, D23, D83

The Anthropocene introduces a new 'universal collective'the human species seen as a group and acting as a global geophysical agent. This 'universal collective' has usually been written about from a Western perspective. It has rarely been explored in relation to what a 'collective' might mean outside the Euro-American zone. The challenge is to rethink 'universal' from within local traditions of intellection so as to, in a sense, 'provincialize' it (after Dipesh Chakrabarty). Highlighting some of the recent anthropological literature on debates about the environment and the nonhuman in the Indic sphere, this article critically examines how contradictions about this 'collective' often return us to deep-seated ideas about what it means to be human especially in relation to segregating beliefs about caste, gender and, ultimately, also nonhumans. In other words, this article attempts to underscore what lies at the heart of the complex endeavour of making sense of the 'collective', from an Indic perspective, in a time of climate breakdown.

An influencing paradigm which presented as an integrated approach in social, cultural, environmental and economical dimensions is the concept of sustainable Urban Regeneration, which tries to resolve urban challenges, environmental crises and development problems for enhancing quality of life and creating balance between Growth, Preservation and Regeneration. However in recent years social sustainability has gained increased recognition as a fundamental component of sustainable development, beginning to receive political and institutional endorsement within the Urban Regeneration agenda. The first objective of this research is to clarify the Urban Regeneration definitions, Principles and concepts with emphasize on social dimension of Sustainability. It attempts to explore the various aspects of social sustainability including social equity, satisfaction of human needs, well being, quality of life, social interaction, cohesion and inclusion, sense of community and sense of place in urban Regeneration strategies. Later, it specifically concentrates on Sustainable Social Sustainability Strategies in historical Public Squares as one of the main pillars in urban social life. The results of research indicate that a strategic approach including fulfilling citizen’s needs, providing social infrastructures, enhancing public participation, accelerating economic growth, Preservation the historical identity and green space management are the major contributing approaches in urban regeneration strategies to achieve social sustainability in historical Public Squares of cities.

As megaprojects have become ubiquitous, their real benefits and costs have come under increased scrutiny. We interviewed Bent Flyvbjerg, who has extensively studied megaproject development. Flyvbjerg has found systematic problems in the development process: by intentionally misrepresenting information and deliberately disregarding risks, proponents instigate projects that result in fewer benefits and higher costs than promised.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

The increasing concern over tourism's greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and its subsequent impact on climate change has led some to recommend strict measures to reduce the volume of travel. While the reduction of tourism's GHG emissions is an essential piece of tourism's sustainability, there has been little discussion of the implications that reducing travel could have on a destination's triple bottom line (ecological, sociocultural, and economic sustainability). Much of the sustainable tourism literature has historically focused on maximizing tourism's benefits to residents' quality of life, the environment, cultural heritage, and the economy, but these traditional metrics have been largely removed from the recent discussion on tourism and climate change. This article proposes a conceptual model that incorporates the traditional metrics of sustainability with the net amount of GHG emitted to help determine whether travel has a net positive or negative impact. While the model is entirely theoretical, it depicts sustainable tourism as not solely a function of GHG emissions, but a function of maximizing tourism's positive impacts (handprint) within destinations while minimizing its GHG emissions (footprint). The article concludes by demonstrating how the framework can be applied to increase tourism's sustainability within destinations as well as globally.

Over the past five decades, rapid development and conversion of forest land into urban land in Pahang River Basin have led to water related problems such as solid wastes problem and degradation of water quality and quantity. This paper discussed the current institutional framework for planning and development in Pahang River Basin, Malaysia. This case study applied the literature background study and field survey. There is lack of provision to give a clear mandate for public participation in the local planning level and public representative could not be guaranteed in the local planning committee. Based on this Pahang River Basin case study, this paper further argues that the participation of local community needs to be strengthened from consultation level to the involvement level. This could be approached through joint management concept. Integrated approach on water resources management of river basin requires a full commitment from all levels of stakeholders. However, the understanding of the characteristics of the river basin both from the natural and human system aspects could not be neglected in planning and development process.

"Over budget, over time, over and over again" appears to be an appropriate slogan for large, complex infrastructure projects. This article explains why cost, benefits, and time forecasts for such projects are systematically over-optimistic in the planning phase. The underlying reasons for forecasting errors are grouped into three categories: delusions or honest mistakes; deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes; or bad luck. Delusion and deception have each been addressed in the management literature before, but here they are jointly considered for the first time. They are specifically applied to infrastructure problems in a manner that allows both academics and practitioners to understand and implement the suggested corrective procedures. The article provides a framework for analyzing the relative explanatory power of delusion and deception. It also suggests a simplified framework for analyzing the complex principal-agent relationships that are involved in the approval and construction of large infrastructure projects, which can be used to improve forecasts. Finally, the article illustrates reference class forecasting, an outside view de-biasing technique that has proven successful in overcoming both delusion and deception in private and public investment decisions.

The circular economy (CE) has recently become a popular discourse especially in government and corporate sectors. Given the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, the concept of CE could indeed help the transition to a sustainable, just and resilient future. However, the actual definition, objectives and forms of implementation of the CE are still unclear, inconsistent, and contested. Different actors and sectors are thus articulating circular discourses which align with their interests, and which often do not sufficiently examine the ecological, social and political implications of circularity. In this context, this research asks how to better navigate and analyse the history, complexity and plurality of circularity discourses by conceptually differentiating them in a comprehensive discourse typology. To answer this question a critical literature review has been carried out, which first, examines and reflects on the core challenges, gaps and limitations of the CE concept. Second, this research develops a comprehensive timeline of circularity thinking, which identifies and conceptually classifies 72 different CE-related concepts from the Global North and South (such as Gandhian and steady-state economics, buen vivir, doughnut economics and degrowth). This leads to the development of a typology of circularity discourses, which classifies circularity visions according to their position on fundamental social, technological, political and ecological issues. This research thus seeks to provide a basis for a more inclusive and comprehensive discussion on the topic, which opens the imaginary regarding the many circular futures that can exist and allows for a cross-pollination of ideas, policy options, strategies, practices and solutions.