ASSESSING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

This paper describes a method in which sustainability objectives were translated into a short list of performance measures or effects through public consultation and the weightings of these effects were determined by the analysis of a stated preference survey in which respondents were asked to choose between development alternatives described in terms of eight effects. The model on which this paper is based achieved adj rho(2) of 0.283 and found the weightings for the effects to be 0.0237 per long term job created, -0.4588 per sick day experienced per person per year, -0.0016 per litre of potable water used per household per day, 0.2573 per hectare of valuable natural environment retained and -0.0002 per rand spent annually to maintain the sustainability techniques that were implemented. The three effects that were not included because of poor t-scores were the kg of household waste sent to landfill per week, the kWh of electricity consumed per household per month, and the hours spent by the household per week improving its sustainability.