Introduction

Charles J. Kibert

The emergence of sustainable development as a major paradigm for human society brings with it numerous intellectual and operational challenges. The Brundtland Report definition of sustainable development, "... meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs ...," provides a complex direction that juxtaposes current behavior with long-term survival. Needs of both present and future generations must be based on two fundamental concepts: (1) the fair and just intergenerational allocation and use of natural resources, and (2) the preservation of biological systems function across time. The construct of human society designed to allocate and provide resources to people is the economy, which, at least for the production of material goods, depends almost entirely on nature for its energy and physical inputs. The built environment is a major sector of the economy, and to be sustainable it, like every other sector of activity, must examine its behavior in light of the imperatives and constraints dictated by sustainability. The unsustainable use of land, energy, water, and materials that is characteristic of construction industry must be changed from the present-day open-loop, cradle-to-grave model to a closed-loop system integrated with an overall industrial system that focuses on dematerialization, deenergization, decarbonization, and detoxification. This shift provides abundant challenges to the wide range of professionals engaged in producing homes, commercial and institutional buildings, industrial complexes, and the wide variety of systems comprising the infrastructure servicing and interconnecting the elements of the built environment. This volume describes some of the key current thinking of academics and professionals seeking to discover the path to sustainability in the built environment.

Insights

Construction industry, like other sectors of the economy, is at present an inefficient and wasteful activity that creates human habitat in a manner generally focused on profitability without consideration of its long-term impacts. In this volume, construction industry refers to the wide range of actors involved in the life cycle of the built environment: developers, planners, designers (including architects, landscape architects, and interior designers), engineers, builders, facility managers, supporting materials industries, and the demolition industry that removes the built environment at the end of its physical or economic useful life. The built environment consumes 40 percent of extracted resources in most industrial countries and 30 to 40 percent of generated energy and thus has a profound effect on the availability of natural resources for future generations. It has a particularly great responsibility to address its current behavior and change course to one that is sustainable.

The subject of sustainability or sustainable development is a complex one, and to explore it thoroughly requires a wide-ranging exploration of diverse subjects. Sustainability is about interconnections within and between several major systems: ecological, social, and economic. The subject becomes no less complex when the viewer is restricted to the subject of creating the built environment in which resource issues, environmental degradation, human health, building economics, community development, and many other issues are closely coupled and intertwined and must be at least partially unraveled for analysis and understanding.

Addressing the concept of sustainability in the creation of communities and buildings also entails dealing with a complex web of ecological, social, and economic issues. Humankind's habitat, as is the case with other species, is constructed by humans primarily for protection from the elements and for safety. Unlike species that rely on their endosomatic appendages (claws, teeth, tails) to build their habitat, man has the ability to make widespread use of exosomatic or human-made tools to create a wide variety of complex structures for habitat, work, play, and movement between the various locations for these activities: the built environment. The creation, maintenance, renovation, and exchange of elements of the built environment provide the economic element of the equation. In the United States the built environment creation process alone accounts for 7 to 10 percent of all economic activity, a significant portion of the total. Ecological interactions with the creation of the built environment are wide and deep. Nature provides all the goods and materials needed to create the fabric and working components; the land on which the buildings and infrastructure are located; the fuel to power the construction and run the resulting structures; the water for the occupants; and the mechanisms for absorbing, assimilating, and processing waste. In short, without nature and ecological systems there would be no resources for a built environment. The actual creation of the built environment has many negative impacts on the natural systems that are in fact so crucial to its existence: destruction of plants and wildlife habitat, solid waste generation, non-point source pollution, release of toxic materials, alteration of natural drainage systems, and water and air pollution. Building creation and operation is tied to power plant construction and operation; automobile access and use; connection of water, natural gas, and other utilities; solid waste generation; wastewater and stormwater processing and disposal; and many other human-made systems that impact natural systems.

Creating a sustainable built environment is a complex task requiring a far wider range of knowledge and experience than conventional practice. At its very roots, sustainability demands attention to the environmental and social contexts of the...