Education and Research - Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment - page 205

and that all we need to do is apply the knowledge and techniques and
we will have dealt with the sustainable development issues. It is not
true. There is even still a debate among some academics as to whether
environmental sustainability as currently perceived (only part of the
full sustainability agenda) is appropriate, although they are in a very
small minority.
The agenda becomes much more complex when we face the issues
raised by those aspects related to sustainable communities. The world
congresses, such as those identified in Chapter 1, have taken this
concept of sustainable development and made it high priority, but the
tools and policies needed to understand and exercise sustainable com-
munities are not well established. When we address communities, we
are dealing with all aspects of human social and political behaviour
and their impact on development. If this is coupled with environmen-
tal factors, the whole of humankind's relationship with its environment
and with one another and all living species is brought into play.
It is a vast canvas on which to research and herein lies its potential
downfall. There is a danger that its spectrum is too wide to be mean-
ingful or to manage. Management must be at the root of the study of
sustainable development. It is assumed that if something is going
wrong we can intervene and do something about it, that is, manage it!
Our experience in the past has shown that, when humans do intervene,
the full impact is often not addressed and while a problem is solved in
one area another is created elsewhere. The reductionist view which
deals with a highly focused sub-area of the total problem has developed
because we as human beings find it difficult to handle all the interrela-
tionships at once. This approach has taken us far in many topics,
particularly in the physical sciences, but it can be found wanting in the
social sciences, mainly because of all the interdependencies between
the players and between the players and the multitude of variables.
We do not know what will happen in the future that may enable us
to explore issues at a global level. It is difficult, even in something more
straightforward like economic or financial investment forecasting, to
know what will happen next (e.g. the credit crunch of 2008/2009). The
models used are based on previous experience, and who knows what
new features are on the horizon? The number of interrelationships is so
huge that it only needs a small change from previous experience for us
to find that a domino effect has been created and a totally new paradigm
with which the model cannot cope. Models are by nature simplifica-
tions of the real world and are myopic. If they were perfect, those in the
know would all be millionaires as we could presumably play the stock
exchange to our advantage. This does not happen.
In some ways this can be depressing and can send rather negative
vibrations around the world. How do we take this very important
matter forward? What is there that may help us? This topic has tried to
lay down some parameters within which we can work. It has outlined