Table Of ContentMohammad Dastbaz
Wim Naudé
Jamileh Manoochehri
Editors
Smart Futures,
Challenges of
Urbanisation,
and Social
Sustainability
Smart Futures, Challenges of Urbanisation,
and Social Sustainability
Mohammad Dastbaz ∙ Wim Naudé
Jamileh Manoochehri
Editors
Smart Futures, Challenges
of Urbanisation, and Social
Sustainability
Editor
Mohammad Dastbaz Wim Naudé
University of Suffolk Maastricht School of Management
Ipswich, UK and Maastricht University
Maastricht, The Netherlands
Jamileh Manoochehri
IZA Institute of Labor Economics
Leicester School of Architecture
Bonn, Germany
De Montfort University Leicester
School of Architecture
Leicester, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-74548-0 ISBN 978-3-319-74549-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74549-7
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Preface
The idea behind putting this volume together was to provide a considered approach
in dealing with some of the most pressing issues facing the development of our
societies. We believe that social sustainability is one of the least understood of the
different areas of sustainable development. Large migrations of populations from
rural areas to cities without planning and without appropriate infrastructure, includ-
ing housing, education, and health care requirements, have created significant chal-
lenges across the globe. There is now the need to look at how the intelligent use of
data on population growth and movement in planning, design, and constructing
infrastructure can be used to meet the challenges of urbanization and the sustainable
development of societies in the face of rapid population growth.
Unlike the political games being played at global stage, the science does not
believe that the world faces a “fake challenge” and does not deny the damage we
have done to our environment. Furthermore, sustainable development is not just
about climate control and more about a measured approach to addressing the 17
“Sustainable Development Goals” identified by the United Nations (announced as
part of “the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” adopted at the United
Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015).
The issues we face are extremely serious and require collective action to avert a
global catastrophe. The Paris climate agreement and its ratification was only the first
step in the long road to addressing the short-, medium-, and long-term issues around
our sustainable development. Without proper monitoring and holding governments
to account for their actions and targets, the damage to our sustainable environment
and future will continue and we will all have our share or burden and blame if we
do not act now.
Ipswich, UK Mohammad Dastbaz
v
Contents
Part I Urbanisations and Social Sustainability
1 A 2030 Vision: “Fake Challenge” or Time for Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Mohammad Dastbaz
2 Urban Planning and City Futures: Planning for Cities
in the Twenty- First Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Ian Strange
3 Urbanisation and Entrepreneurship in Development:
Like a Horse and Carriage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Wim Naudé
4 Social Sustainability, Housing and Alienation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Jamileh Manoochehri
5 The Misalignment of Policy and Practice in Sustainable
Urban Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Michael Crilly and Mark Lemon
6 Reporting Corporate Sustainability: The Challenges
of Organisational and Political Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Christopher Gorse, John Sturges, Nafa Duwebi, and Mike Bates
Part II Case Studies
7 A Social-Environmental Interface of Sustainable
Development: A Case Study of Ghadames, Libya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Ahmad Taki and Jamal Alabid
8 The Undervaluation, but Extreme Importance,
of Social Sustainability in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Elizelle Juanee Cilliers
vii
viii Contents
9 Smart Eco-Cities Are Managing Information Flows
in an Integrated Way: The Example of Water, Electricity
and Solid Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Meine Pieter van Dijk
10 Reimagining Resources to Build Smart Futures: An Agritech
Case Study of Aeroponics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Helen Mytton-Mills
11 Buildings that Perform: Thermal Performance and Comfort . . . . . . 193
Christopher Gorse, Martin Fletcher, Felix Thomas, Fiona Fylan,
David Glew, David Farmer, and Pat Aloise-Young
12 Maintaining Excellence and Expertise Within Medical Imaging:
A Sustainable Practice? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Christopher M. Hayre
13 ‘Safety and Cybersecurity in a Digital Age’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Simon Dukes
14 A Sustainable Higher Education Sector: The Place
for Mature and Part- Time Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Suzanne Richardson and Jacqueline Stevenson
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Part I
Urbanisations and Social Sustainability
Chapter 1
A 2030 Vision: “Fake Challenge” or Time
for Action
Mohammad Dastbaz
“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when
to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank
accounts and that you can’t eat money…” – Alanis Obomsawin “an Abenaki from
the Odanak reserve” – From the collection of essays published in 1972 titled “Who
is the Chairman of This Meeting?”
1.1 Context
In June 2017, Donald Trump announced that the USA will be withdrawing from the
Paris climate agreement, to put “America first” and to save “American jobs”, calling
the agreement unfair to America’s interest. At the time, the US government, Syria
and Nicaragua stood as the only other countries who had not signed the accord
(Syria has since joined the agreement). This meant that the USA, the world’s second
largest emitter of greenhouse gases, moved to jeopardise the Paris Agreement,
effectively denying that there is an environmental challenge that needs to be dealt
with and saw no need and felt no responsibility to help the world and humanity
address our ever-growing challenge of climate change and environmental damage.
The Paris Agreement was the result of long and hard negotiations that were done
before and during the 2015 “United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21”
which was held in Paris, between 30 November and 12 December 2015. Following
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, this was to be the most important initiative by countries of
the world to address the ever-growing problems of global warming and environmen-
tal challenges facing future and sustainable development of our planet.
M. Dastbaz (*)
University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 3
M. Dastbaz et al. (eds.), Smart Futures, Challenges of Urbanisation, and Social
Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74549-7_1
4 M. Dastbaz
The conference’s negotiated outcome was an agreement to address climate
change, representing a consensus between 196 countries and organisations attend-
ing it. The Paris Agreement was later, on 22 April 2016 (Earth Day), signed by 174
countries in New York.
The “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”, web portal in
2016, reported that of the 197 Parties to the Paris Convention, 169 Parties have rati-
fied the agreement, and therefore, on 5 October 2016, the threshold for entry into
force of the Paris Agreement was achieved, and the Paris Agreement entered into
force on 4th November 2016.1
The Paris Agreement recognised the need “for an effective and progressive
response to the urgent threat of climate change on the basis of the best available
scientific knowledge; Also recognizing the specific needs and special circumstances
of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the
adverse effects of climate change, as provided for in the Convention…”.2
More importantly the signatories to the Paris Agreement acknowledge that
“Climate change is a common concern of humankind, Parties should, when taking
action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective
obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples,
local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vul-
nerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empow-
erment of women and intergenerational equity…”.3
1.2 Social Sustainability and Urbanisation
There has been significant body of research around what the literature calls “urban-
isation” and the challenges this poses towards our sustainable development. It is
generally viewed that sustainable development and the ever-growing population
movement from rural areas to cities pose one of the key challenges in setting goals
and putting plans in place to deal with the twenty-first century changing population
landscape and dwindling natural resources.
Dempsey et al. (2009) state that “Sustainable development is a widely used term,
which has been increasingly influential on UK planning, housing and urban policy
in recent years. Debates about sustainability no longer consider sustainability solely
as an environmental concern, but also incorporate economic and social dimensions”.4
1 http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php
2 http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agree-
ment.pdf
3 http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agree-
ment.pdf
4 The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability – http://
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.417/full
