Rethinking sustainability frameworks in neighbourhood projects: a process-based approach

A process-based approach is used to examine the deployment of two neighbourhood-scale sustainability assessment systems and their tools in two European cities. It explores how these sustainability assessment systems and their tools are contextualized within a larger design and planning process by considering how stakeholders collaborate, how they set design problems, how they make decisions and how they propose design solutions in the early design phases. Specifically, using interviews conducted with key project actors in Malmo, Sweden, and Barcelona, Spain, this paper examines how the sustainability assessment systems in each respective case study were framed, and how this framing impacted upon the design process. A key finding is that how sustainability assessment systems are framed has just as significant an impact as the nature of the tools, especially on the processes entailed. Community participation can have a strong, positive impact on the design process and on outcomes. The case studies confirm that context and players cannot be divorced from tools.