Sustainability Assessment of Housing Developments: A New Methodology

In order to combat the rapid degradation of the world’s ecosystems and depletion of natural resources, governments and planning authorities are searching for more sustainable forms of development. The need to assess the “sustainability” of development proposals is thus of great importance to policy and decision makers. However, effective methods of assessing the overall sustainability of housing developments (proposed or existing) have yet to be established. This research aims to address this problem by presenting a new methodology to assess the sustainability of housing development systems. The methodology uses indicators with a common “Sustainability Scale” which is derived from percentiles of a population with resource use above a predetermined sustainable level, and has been coupled with a technique for modelling complex housing development systems using multiagent based simulation. The methodology was shown to be operational in the case study application of the Christie Walk housing development in inner-city Adelaide, Australia. The results of the assessment showed that the development compared favourably to the rest of the Adelaide metropolitan area. The case study also highlighted, through behavioural scenario analyses, the importance of good infrastructure and design in reducing the impacts of human behaviour on housing development sustainability. It is envisaged that this new methodology of combining sustainability assessment with an integrated modelling technique will provide the basis for a solution to many of the challenges currently facing sustainability researchers, policy makers and planning authorities of urban environments both in Australia and world wide.