Browse Hierarchy PLAN4003: Environmental Sustainability

This module introduces students to the concept of sustainable development, and examines how issues of sustainability affect the UK's built and natural environment through arrangements for infrastructure and resource use. The emphasis is on the land use planning system as the main mechanism that can help deliver a more 'sustainable environment', where the environment is seen as extending beyond its physical components and including the quality of life, equity and distribution aspects. In implementing sustainability the focus is not just about the relationship of people to the environment (usually expressed as the impact of humans on their surroundings), but also about the relationship of people to each other. Resources and opportunities should be fairly distributed on a global scale between countries, and between the developing and the developed world. It also means that access and control over resources and opportunities concerning the environment should be equally available on a local scale to all people regardless of any other issue, such as age, gender, race or social class. Policies or restrictions should not unfairly disadvantage some people over others, either intentionally or unintentionally.