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Green-Sighted but City-Blind: Developer Attitudes to Sustainable Urban Transformation

Green-Sighted but City-Blind: Developer Attitudes to Sustainable Urban Transformation South Africa’s sprawling, fragmented urban form remains essentially intact, despite the inequitable consequences and resource inefficiencies. Government policies have advocated urban integration-compaction for two decades, in the face of inertia and resistance from vested interests. This paper investigates the attitudes of developers towards the principles of sustainable urban transformation. Developers tend to favour a narrow agenda of new green buildings over more environmentally significant brownfield re-development and refurbished buildings. While they recognise the need for higher-density, mixed-use schemes within existing built-up areas, most remain reluctant to get directly involved themselves because of the perceived risks and uncertainties. Yet, several niche developers are breaking the mould and beginning to challenge such assumptions about the potential for profitable investment in hitherto neglected areas. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Urban Forum Springer Journals

Green-Sighted but City-Blind: Developer Attitudes to Sustainable Urban Transformation

Urban Forum , Volume 26 (3) – Jun 9, 2015

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References (86)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Subject
Social Sciences, general; Human Geography; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Population Economics; Political Science, general; Sociology, general
ISSN
1015-3802
eISSN
1874-6330
DOI
10.1007/s12132-015-9254-8
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

South Africa’s sprawling, fragmented urban form remains essentially intact, despite the inequitable consequences and resource inefficiencies. Government policies have advocated urban integration-compaction for two decades, in the face of inertia and resistance from vested interests. This paper investigates the attitudes of developers towards the principles of sustainable urban transformation. Developers tend to favour a narrow agenda of new green buildings over more environmentally significant brownfield re-development and refurbished buildings. While they recognise the need for higher-density, mixed-use schemes within existing built-up areas, most remain reluctant to get directly involved themselves because of the perceived risks and uncertainties. Yet, several niche developers are breaking the mould and beginning to challenge such assumptions about the potential for profitable investment in hitherto neglected areas.

Journal

Urban ForumSpringer Journals

Published: Jun 9, 2015

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