Janis Birkeland

Positive development and assessment

Purpose – There has been a tendency in sustainability science to be passive. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an alternative positive framework for a more active and direct approach to sustainable design and assessment that de-couples environmental impacts and economic growth. Design/methodology/approach – This paper deconstructs some systemic gaps that are critical to sustainability in built environment management processes and tools, and reframes negative “sustainable” decision making and assessment frameworks into their positive counterparts. In particular, it addresses the omission of ecology, design and ethics in development assessment. Findings – Development can be designed to provide ecological gains and surplus “eco-services,” but assessment tools and processes favor business-as-usual. Despite the tenacity of the dominant paradigm (DP) in sustainable development institutionalized by the Brundtland Report over 25 years ago, these omissions are easily corrected. Research limitations/implica...

Implementing Sustainability: The New Zealand Experience

Implementing Sustainability is a guided tour of planning in New Zealand since 1999, when the Resource Management Act (RMA) was enacted. The author, Caroline Miller, an academic with 15 years’ professional planning experience, charts the changes brought about by the RMA from a practitioner’s viewpoint. The RMA’s significance is that it was the first time that a set of laws on planning and the environment were based on sustainability, albeit a ‘narrow’ conception of it (p. 1). She analyses the impediments to realising the intent of the RMA and the reactions of various New Zealand interest groups over time. While considering the experiment in legislative reform to be a useful learning experience, she concludes that “ . . . developers, farmers and many other critics are now united in their opposition to the act. So deep-seated is that opposition that is hard to see it changing unless the act is replaced” (p. 201). As the book provides peepholes into local planning and politics, it should be of voyeuristic interest to professionals in many other fields that transect planning, such as government personnel involved in development, industry, transport or other land uses. The chapters are centred on different themes, such as institutions and processes, resources, built environment, issues relevant to Maori and the politics of planning. The book is well structured and organised, and combines history, facts, anecdotes and observations in a seamless manner. Therefore, the book is quite accessible, even to those who may find the subject of planning somewhat less than arousing. In the 1970s, when my planning law professor returned from a planning conference, I asked, “what was new”. He responded that “nothing is ever new in planning”. What Implementing Sustainability demonstrated to your reviewer is that, despite legislative differences, the nature of planning in relation to sustainability is similar across the English-speaking democracies and across time. Through storytelling, the author was able to communicate the open systems nature of planning, constantly buffeted by the winds of political, social and economic trends, changing contexts and tangential factors over which planners have no control. The more things change the more they stay the same. The ‘title’ promises something the book does not deliver, however. The book does not address “implementing sustainability” or the shortcomings of the legislation in terms of sustainability. The title may have been the publisher’s strategy to widen the audience for marketing purposes. After all, a title such as “Implementing the Resource Management Act in NZ” would not attract a large audience. However, one should not judge a book by its cover. While planning and sustainability seem almost synonymous to many people today,