Incorporating citizen participation into
urban planning is a continued struggle;
more recently, this has been coupled with a
push to enhance the sustainability of urban
developments. Various sustainability
certification schemes aim to help
developers build to high sustainability
standards, yet few have incorporated
strong citizen participation requirements
alongside. BREEAM Communities is one of
the first to do so. This dissertation aims to
utilise Chantry’s (2022) political spaces of
citizen engagement heuristic to assess the
efficacy of such citizen engagement
requirements in the BREEAM Communities
framework. Findings from eight BREEAM
Communities Assessors unveiled that the
framework facilitates mixed levels of
citizen engagement. In the realms of
proposal formation and proposal
implementation, BREEAM Communities has
stringent requirements that have the
potential to facilitate high-quality
engagement. However, the information
provision and deliberation aspects of
engagement were found to be poorly
facilitated. This research therefore
recommends including specific information
provision and deliberation stipulations in the BREEAM Communities compliance
notes. Chantry’s (2022) heuristic was also
evaluated; it was found that stakeholder
attitudes to engagement could not be
represented on the heuristic, yet it is
important in influencing citizen
engagement quality. Equally, a new political
space of engagement timing was
discovered. This, alongside smaller
adjustments, has been added to an
enhanced political spaces of citizen
engagement heuristic. Findings concerning
both BREEAM Communities and Chantry’s
(2022) heuristic can provide a productive
foundation to push for more effective
citizen participation, both in theory and in
practice.
Lists
Lists
Loading previews...
