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Landscape, urban, city, and town planning are the disciplines of land use planning that explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities. Other professions deal in more detail with a smaller scale of development, namely architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. Regional planning deals with a still larger environment, at a less detailed level.
Sustainable development and sustainability have become important concepts in today's urban planning field, with the recognition that current consumption and living habits may be leading to problems such as the overuse of natural resources, ecosystem destruction, urban heat islands, pollution, growing social inequality and large-scale climate change. Many urban planners have, as a result, begun to advocate for the development of sustainable cities.
- Green Building Media
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Four organisations – the World Bank, the UN Development Programme, the UN Environmental Programme and the World Resources Institute – recently collaborated on the most ambitious study of global ecosystems ever undertaken. The first results of this project, called a Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, were presented to a special sitting of the United Nations in 2001.
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The following section offers a brief summary of the impact of humans and their buildings on the natural and built environments. These impacts are cross-referenced to the triple bottom line themes, sub-themes and indicators used for the design guidelines.
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The pursuit of sustainable development brings the construction industry, and specifically the building industry component thereof, into sharp relief. The built environment is a major component of contemporary life. Almost half the world’s population (47,2%)[20] is now urbanised and by 2050 that proportion will have reached two-thirds. The urban population of the United Kingdom is already at 89,5 percent.
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Sprawling cities are fast becoming unmanageable according to the “State of the World’s Cities” report of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements completed in June 2000. It found that the existing institutions governing the administration of cities are not adequate to control the sprawling urban centres. The UNCHS defines a sustainable city as one that has a lasting supply of the natural resources on which its development depends and a lasting security from environmental hazards which may threaten development achievements.
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In the United Kingdom the net change from rural to urban land use is in the region of 6,500 hectares per annum. Globally, agricultural land accounts for 38 percent of all land: this is the resource that is to ensure food production for the world’s population.
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