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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the article titled Towards sustainable urban communities from 2012 by Appu Haapio published in the Environmental Impact Assessment Review journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see comparison of the internationally well-known sustainability assessment tools, BREEAM Communities, CASBEE for Urban Development, and LEED for Neighbourhood Development. This article investigates and compares these assessment tools with regards to sustainability in urban development and how the decision-makers could use these tools the best.

Over the past few decades, numerous building environmental assessment tools have been developed for the building sector to help decision-making and improve the environmental performance of buildings and building stocks. However, the requirements for the building assessment tools have increased and to assess building components and separate buildings is not enough. Due to the rapid increase of urbanisation, the neighbourhoods, built environment, public transportation, and services should be considered simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of this research was to clarify the field of assessment tools for urban communities by analysing the current situation with the focus on international tools: the BREEAM Communities, the CASBEE for Urban Development, and the LEED for Neighbourhood Development.

Interest towards sustainability and rating of buildings in terms of environmental performance has increased over the last 2 decades with numerous studies on comparing and using them, however, the assessment tools for urban communities have not been compared. Thus, this paper focuses on the existing international tools for urban communities: CASBEE for Urban Development from Japan, BREEAM Communities from UK, and LEED for Neighbourhood Development from the USA.

The Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency, abbreviated to CASBEE is a joint research and development project of the Japanese government, industry and academia, started in 2001. It covers housing scale, building scale and urban scale with the conglomeration of buildings and outdoor spaces. Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method, abbreviated to BREEAM was the first commercially available environmental assessment tool for building from the UK established in 1990. BREEAM Communities focuses on mitigating the overall impacts of development projects within the built environment and provides an opportunity for the project to show their environmental, social, and economic benefits to the local community at the planning stage. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, abbreviated to LEED integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green buildings into a neighbourhood design rating system with land use and environmental considerations, founded in the USA in 2007. LEED for Neighbourhood Development emphasises site selection, design and construction elements, bringing buildings and infrastructure together, relating the neighbourhood to its landscape and local and regional context.

These assessment tools were compared to their used categories and ratings, regions of origins, site locations. Their categories and rating systems are different, while they are all very much dependent on national bibliography, recommendations and standards, regulations, building codes, cultural heritage, way of living and building culture. Only with CASBEE is possible to evaluate new towns, and the other two highlights the significance of site location and the development’s connection to its surroundings. All three stress the importance of public transportation system and their functionality. LEED and BREEAM require assessing at least one building.

Haapio categorised the tools’ criteria into 7 categories: infrastructure, location, transportation, resources and energy, ecology, business and economy and employment, and well-being. The categories are common within urban assessment tools, except for well-being which was included for the increasing role of the inhabitants in decision-making. CASBEE had the most criteria in infrastructure, resources and energy, and ecology. In BREEAM, infrastructure and transportation were the most important, while in LEED infrastructure and ecology were highlighted. Based on this, the most significant category was infrastructure, followed by ecology, resources and energy, and transportation.

The question emerges why to certify urban areas? Property development is a business, and certifications hopefully bring measurable publicity and exposure to the developer. Moreover, on-going debates encourage to measure sustainable development based on indicators or evaluation criteria. Assessment enables the comparison of urban areas and municipalities and notable supports decision-making. The interest towards certification systems in increasing, although this can be due to many different factors: real interest in sustainable building and urban development, or purely profiling and benefiting out of the certification. Additionally, who should use and benefit from these assessment tools? Naturally, authorities, city planners, designers and developers could be ones, as these tools can support the decision-making. However, the tools’ indicators are often intended for use after a project is finished, though may be utilised during design.

Criteria and indicators are characteristics, let be quantitative or qualitative or descriptive, which are considered important and by which the success or failure of a development can be judged. Within the assessed tools, several criteria and indicators are interlinked, achieving one may help achieving others. Additionally, comparing them across the tools seems challenging, because the tools value them differently, as do the actors in the built environment. Therefore, striking a balance between completeness in the coverage and simplicity of use is one of the challenges in developing an effective and efficient environmental building assessment tool.

The assessment tools in this study strongly emphasise the characteristics of their state of the region and their linkage to their region is strong. They depend on national standards, regulations, building codes, cultural heritage, way of living and building culture. The tools need to be properly applied to be used at different places, therefore, the certification and documentation processes may seem challenging.

Instead of indistinctly adopting indicators and urban assessment tools, sharing experiences generated from different practices could eliminate barriers to the maturity of sustainable urbanisation as a common practice. The current assessment tools may be utilised in the development of national urban assessment tools emphasising local characteristics, and the coverage of the criteria and indicators have to be reflected in the local context. Moreover, the sensitivity of the tools should be evaluated in the local context.

No city or urban region can achieve sustainability on its own. Regardless of local land use and environmental policies, a prerequisite for sustainable cities is sustainable use of the global hinterland. Even though urban areas disrupt ecosystems in the region, the concentration of population and consumption has its benefits regarding global sustainability, such as public transportation reduces car dependency and so on. Cities and their inhabitants play a significant role in helping to achieve global sustainability. This idea of sustainability spotlights the population’s ability to live within the environmental limits of the Earth: neither cities nor city buildings are sustainable, but can significantly contribute to global environmental sustainability.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. There are internationally well-known sustainability assessment tools, BREAAM, LEED and CASBEE, which can be used to assess urban sustainability, not just building sustainability, even if their goals can be diverted by different agents in the urban development sphere.
2. These tools need to be properly applied to the local context they are utilised in
3. Even though urban areas disrupt ecosystems, the concentration of population and consumption has its benefits regarding global sustainability.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. How can we make sure that these tools are used properly and not just for marketing purposes?
2. How can we make sure that these or other tools provide frameworks and requirements for the design phase as well?
3. How can we create a national development strategy that allows location based specifics?

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