Examining the role of BREEAM Communities in green infrastructure evaluation
Lead investigator: Rosalie Callway, with Tim Dixon and Dragana Nikolic
Evaluation of Green infrastructure (GI) is reported to improve decision-making and outcomes in neighbourhood design, but there is little research that examines the links between GI evaluation and masterplan outcomes. An empirical study of six English master planned residential sites was carried out of three broad types of neighbourhood development (estate regeneration, urban infill, and rural-urban extension). In each of the three types two pairs of sties were studied, one site which adopted BREEAM Communities (BC) and one had not. This supported an examination of whether BC affected GI evaluative practice and masterplan decisions. A series of ‘evaluative episodes’ were studied across the six sites, using a Strategy-as-Practice framework to trace how different actors viewed specific types of GI (e.g. street trees, green roofs, soft Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDS)), how the GI was formally evaluated in the course of the episodes and whether the application of BC affected that evaluation. Potential ways to enhance GI evaluative embeddedness in masterplan processes were also reviewed as a part of the study.
Associated publications
Callway, R., Dixon, T. and Nikolic, D. (2016) BREEAM Communities: Challenges for Sustainable Neighbourhood Evaluation, RICS COBRA September 2016.
Callway, R., Dixon, T. and Nikolic, D. (2017) Embedded evaluation? Examining green infrastructure evaluation in the neighbourhood masterplan journey. ARCOM, September 2017