Environmentally Sustainable Construction: Knowledge and Learning in London Planning Departments

Abstract

Environmentally sustainable construction is now recognised as a significant element of the broader sustainable development agenda and planners are being called upon to play a role in delivering more sustainable patterns of construction and development. This puts particular demands on the knowledge resources of planners since knowledge is implicated in the power relations between planners and developers. This paper examines the interrelationship between knowledge of environmentally sustainable construction and practice in planning departments. Drawing on a survey of and interviews with planners in London, it discusses the construction of knowledge within the dynamics of planning organisations and the potential for learning to promote a more sustainable built environment. Wenger's concept of communities of practice frames the analysis, alongside consideration of the translation of knowledge into bureaucratic and usable forms and the role of knowledge brokers in this process.

Keywords:

• Sustainable construction
• planning practice
• communities of practice
• knowledge
• knowledge brokers

Acknowledgements

The research reported here was funded by HEFCE under its Higher Education Innovation Fund 2 and undertaken within the Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The project benefited from a steering committee of key local actors in London; many thanks to the members of this committee and also to all those planners who responded to the internet survey and to requests for interviews and meetings.

Notes

1. The response rate on web-based surveys is acknowledged usually to be lower than that for postal surveys, but this is usually compensated for by more complete responses (Cole, 2005; Tress et al., 2005). Tress et al. (op. cit.) cites response rates of 7-44% and a scan of other recently published web-based surveys of professionals (the target group) found examples of response rates of 36% (Khan et al., 2005) and 45% (Parker & Skitmore, 2005), together with examples of freely solicited survey responses, where it was not possible to calculate a response rate (De Graft Johnson et al., 2005; Wheaton et al., 2006). The response rate of this survey, therefore, compares favourably.

2. The survey used a Lickert Scale ranging from strongly agreed to strongly disagreed; when a figure is reported here for the percentage of respondents agreeing (or disagreeing) this includes those who answered ‘agreed’ and ‘strongly agreed’ (or the equivalents for disagreed).