Social sustainability in planning processes have been studied rather widely and from different perspectives. Maginn in his 2007 study focused specifically on community participation and ethnography in planning processes, with the goal of providing a governance and methodological framework for promoting “inclusionary argumentation and consensus building” as well as helping stakeholders become more aware of their cultural practices, processes and relations, which helps in creating better community participation in the future (Maginn 2007). Similarly, Kahila-Tani et al. in their 2016 study focus on public participation with the viewpoint of using GIS tools to support the process of making the masterplan in Helsinki. Their results show that the GIS tools can have the ability to evolve into a more inclusive participatory planning support system (Kahila-Tani et al. 2016)
Johansson et al. (2016) in turn focused on the possibilities of visualising social sustainability data in a 3D map form, and considered in their study four main aspects of social sustainability: social inclusion, built environment, public services in the municipality and personal finances (Johansson et al. 2016). González Martínez in her 2015 thesis studied social sustainability in a land use planning process of a Colombian city and focused on six main parameters of social sustainability: “citizen participation and empowerment, sense of
belonging, social inclusion, social cohesion, social capital and social mixing” (González Martínez 2015).
However, for the purpose of this thesis the above-mentioned studies are not used as widely for further reference as they have a more focused scope in terms of the social sustainability aspects that are studied. The studies by Yrjänä et al. (2018) and Rashidfarokhi et al. (2018b), which are presented in the next paragraphs, offer a wider view of social sustainability parameters related to planning, which better suits the purpose of creating a new comprehensive social sustainability framework.
Yrjänä et al. (2018) focused their study in analysing retail planning policy discourse in Finland from a sustainability point of view. They collected material from newspaper articles and other media sources published between 1990 and 2015, and used critical discourse analysis to identify social sustainability policy issues discussed in the media and how their weights change throughout the studied era. (Yrjänä et al. 2018)
A holistic sustainability framework was developed to categorize the found issues. Their framework presents six categories related to social sustainability; Social inclusion, Quality of life, Safety, Sense of community, Equity and Local employment. (Yrjänä et al. 2018) Of these six categories, four were found having significant weight in media discourse in the 1990s (Social inclusion, Quality of life, Equity and Local employment), where as in the 2000s only two categories (social inclusion and quality of life) were of significant weight.
This signals a decline in the overall weight of social sustainability compared to economic and environmental sustainability between 1990 and 2015 from 35% to 23% respectively, with environmental sustainability gaining weight by climate change becoming a pressing topic. (Yrjänä et al. 2018)
Yrjänä et al. (2018) conclude, that environmental sustainability aspects have gained more weight in the 2000s compared to the 1990s and that increased control of retail planning is seen in the discourse as the main solution for controlling the problems that are related to the retail planning. Especially preventing the spread of retailing outside of towns and cities to the outskirts into so called car markets was seen as an important sustainability measure, which would both increase accessibility of retail for all people regardless of if they own a car, and also increase or preserve the livelihood of city centers. Yrjänä et al. also note, that the reliability of the empirical findings need to be considered with the knowledge that policy discourse in the media is likely always affected by the reporters and stakeholders bias or power relations.(Yrjänä et al. 2018)
Rashidfarokhi et al. (2018b) studied social sustainability in planning by covering scientific literature and sustainability assessment tools in order to create a tool for assessing social sustainability in land use planning processes and assessed the created tool with a case study.
(Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
They collected and reviewed academic literature and assessment tools and in the first state identified 120 social sustainability elements by the means of content analysis. Secondly, they combined elements with similar content or mutual definitions to reduce the number of elements to 45. In the third stage, they eliminated elements that were not relevant for the scope of the study and thus not elements of land use planning processes. Elements were deemed irrelevant by three conditions; “they were related to the physical world, their
realisation was subject to the fulfilment of other social sustainability elements or they were the objectives of land use planning and not elements of the planning project”. With this elimination, they ended up with a set of 26 elements. Lastly, they grouped the found 26 relevant elements into six general themes in order to make the tool easier to use and understand. (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
The final six general themes are Equity, Social inclusion, Social cohesion, Social capital, Community participation and Safety.The final 26 elements of social sustainability in land use planning processes under the six general themes are presented in Table 2. (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
Table 2 Six general themes and the related social sustainability elements (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
General themes Social sustainability elements
Equity Equal opportunities and access to resources; Inter and intra-generational equity; Gender equity; Equity for minorities and disadvantaged groups
Social inclusion Diversity; Arts and culture; Social integration;
Social mixing; Conflicts mitigation
Social cohesion Community vitality; Active community
organizations; Accessibility to institutions;
Innovation and process; Citizen perception of government performance; Social solidarity; Civic engagement and volunteerism
Social capital Social norms; Social values; Social/civic networks;
Trust and optimism; Access to civic and public spaces
Community participation Knowledge management; Community
empowerment; Partnership and collaboration
Safety Security; Freedom; Resilience
In the second phase of their study, Rashidfarokhi et al. (2018) used the assessment tool to analyse a case study of a land use planning process in the Finnish city of Lappeenranta.
Additional details were provided for every theme of the tool, as well as practical examples of measures that would need to be taken in the planning process to cover the elements. They then used the detailed tool to assess related current legislation and the practical process of the planning. (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018)
Several shortcomings in social sustainability were found in the legislation as well as the planning process. The legislation was found to lack guidelines and strategies for providing equal opportunity of participation to vulnerable social groups, and for ensuring the inclusion of all interest parties in the planning process. The legislation also lacks “instruments for promoting mutual understanding and a sense of community in public–private–people partnerships” as well as “promotion of the creation of permanent settings for continuous
learning on the changing social environment”. Community participation and safety are considered a part of the legislation, but the legislation fails to specify how much influence people should have in the process and how safety should be addressed in the planning process. (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
The planning process in question also had a substantial amount of shortcomings in light of the social sustainability tool. Main problems in the process were that the published material and information was only available in Finnish and it was published only in a minimal number of channels, making the information unavailable for many social groups. Three public meetings were held at the town hall to address social capital, community participation and safety. In these meetings, the public was allowed to raise questions and express their opinions in written form with their names required. This raises questions about the actual safety of participants in the process, and can be seen as an inadequate means of tackling these issues. (Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
Overall, results of the study highlight community participation as the main approach to social sustainability. However, despite existing guidelines for the participation process, it was unclear how much influence people can actually have in the decision-making process.
Shortcomings were most significant in the areas of equity and social inclusion, which was seen as problems in the information flow, language and addressing of special needs.
(Rashidfarokhi et al. 2018b)
2.3 Social sustainability in sustainability reporting of real estate