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Social Acceptability

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Dimensions of the Sustainable City

Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 2))

Abstract

Urban forms cannot be considered ‘sustainable’ in the full sense if they are not acceptable to people as places to live, work and interact. This chapter focuses on the relationship between urban form and social sustainability, and has four main aims. First, drawing upon a wide-ranging literature we advance and clarify an understanding of social sustainability that allows us to explore possible links between social sustainability and urban form. There has hitherto been a lack of clear and agreed definitions for this concept and we hope our approach contributes to a better shared understanding. The second aim is to address ways of measuring social sustainability and testing/quantifying some of the hypothesized relationships between selected dimensions of social sustainability and urban form. The measures used draw primarily on the household survey of case study neighbourhoods, linked to urban form measures as described in Chapter 2. The third aim of the chapter is to examine the empirical relationships between aspects of social sustainability and different aspects of urban form, particularly density, housing type and location. This analysis highlights the importance of controlling for exogenous and intervening variables, such as housing tenure and the social composition of neighbourhoods, in testing and calibrating these relationships. The final aim is to offer some more insights into how and why some urban forms may provide more beneficial social outcomes for different groups of people, based on qualitative focus group evidence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research into Socially Inclusive Services (CRSIS), School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Glen Bramley & David Watkins

  2. CRSIS, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Caroline Brown (Research Associate)

  3. Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Nicola Dempsey (I’DGO TOO Postdoctoral Researcher, CityForm Consortium Project Manager)

  4. Children, Young People and Social Care Team, Scottish Government, Edinburgh, UK

    Sinead Power (Senior Researcher, formerly Research Associate)

  5. School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Sinead Power (Senior Researcher, formerly Research Associate)

Authors
  1. Glen Bramley
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  2. Caroline Brown
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  3. Nicola Dempsey
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  4. Sinead Power
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  5. David Watkins
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford Inst. Sustainable Development, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, OX3 0BP, United Kingdom

    Mike Jenks

  2. School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, United Kingdom

    Colin Jones

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Bramley, G., Brown, C., Dempsey, N., Power, S., Watkins, D. (2010). Social Acceptability. In: Jenks, M., Jones, C. (eds) Dimensions of the Sustainable City. Future City, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8647-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8647-2_5

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