Defining cultural sustainability in multicultural built environments

The Australian built environment is an arena where multicultural identity and difference are tangibly negotiated. What occurs on a daily basis in its cities is a complex series of negotiations between multiple communities, all of whom adapt their own cultures, as well as adopting elements from their surrounding environment. This paper investigates these issues by comparing the physical development within a contemporary Australian city with the social and cultural changes that have taken place in it. It asks the question. Whose culture should be sustained in this context, and on what basis? To what extent should the urban environment be reflecting of the changes, as much as the origins, of a relatively young settler society (notwithstanding the fact that its original inhabitants have a history that predates this settlement by thousands of years). More broadly, what constitutes cultural sustainability in a multicultural society, and how is, might, or should this be reflected in its built environment?

The politics of 'sustainability': a critical discourse analysis of Victorian Government policy discourse, 1999-2006

Since its emergence during the 1980s the idea of sustainability has come to provide the dominant frame within which environmental policy is debated. Thus, for many ‘sustainability’ represents the best way to address the economic, social and environmental effects of the myriad of environmental issues facing human societies, including biodiversity loss, soil erosion, pollution of waterways, ozone depletion and climate change. There are however, widely divergent views advocated as to what sustainability means, which has important implications for how serious environmental issues are understood to be, why they are important, what has caused them, and what needs to be done to address them. Given the diversity of such views, the consequences for policy making, and the likelihood of effective responses being developed, are self evident. Within this context, this thesis investigates the politics of sustainability, focussing particularly on the way in which it is defined, because of the implications this has for the way in which environmental issues are understood and addressed. Following a review of various approaches to analysing environmental policy (traditional, mainstream, ecopolitical and discursive), Norman Fairclough’s approach to discourse analysis (Critical Discourse Analysis) was identified as having particular merit. Fairclough’s approach avoids the assumption that policy issues exist independently of the way they are framed and offers a perspective on discourse that links the social theoretical concerns of Foucault with the micro level concerns of linguistics. It also provides a means for taking environmental policy analysis in directions that that have attracted relatively limited attraction, namely the detailed analysis of the ideological effects of language on environmental policy. In this thesis Fairclough’s approach is used to explore how three storylines of sustainability (sustainable development, environmentally sustainable growth and transforming society) and their associated discourses shaped environmental policy making in Victoria, Australia, between 1999 and 2006. In undertaking this analysis, I examined the political and institutional context informing policy making (social practice); the contested process of text production (discourse practice), and; the detailed wording of a policy text (textual analysis). A major policy statement on environmental sustainability released by the Victorian Government in 2005 is subjected to detailed analysis. Based on the analysis undertaken, the substantive finding from this research is that rather than moving beyond neoliberalism, the Victorian Government embraced an approach to sustainability that was informed by neoliberalism and (weak) ecological modernisation, which constructs sustainability in ways that limit its importance and constrain the types of responses that could be advocated. In doing so, it drew heavily on notions of natural assets and ecosystems services as ways to make sense of the environment and why it is important. The Victorian Government also highlighted that environmental issues are caused by the cumulative effects of individual choices, and emphasized the importance of individual choice and behavioural change as central features of sustainability, while restricting opportunities for more transformative ideas to be heard. The broader conclusion arising from this research is that approaches to environmental policy that rely on neoliberal and (weak) ecological modern discourses are flawed, because, in commodifying nature, limiting the nature and magnitude of change required, and placing responsibility onto individuals they offer a constrained understanding of the challenge of sustainability and what needs to be done about it. The overall contribution made by this research is an improved understanding of the discursive nature of the politics of sustainability and the influence of neoliberalism and ecological modernisation, the use of a methodology that has attracted relatively limited attention within environmental policy (despite its widespread use in other areas of policy) and the documentation of a period of significant environmental policy reform in Victoria.

New governance, green planning and sustainability : Tasmania together and growing Victoria together

Bridgman and Davis(2000:91) have argued that ‘ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives’. This article compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro-policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless, both plans have the capacity to ‘green’ state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro-policy setting. The article encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re-engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability.

Implanting sustainability in business strategies : CSR, ethics or the law

This paper elucidates the conundrum faced by Australian businesses in developing ‘sustainable’ business strategies that are acceptable to a multiplicity of stakeholders. A content analysis of the web pages for leading Australian companies indicates that there is little tangible evidence that sustainable business practices are being implemented. The authors propose several directions for research into substantive issues between ethical behaviour, corporate social responsibility and environmentally sustainable behaviour for businesses. Each of these areas is developing research in relative isolation. However, we argue that this paradigmatic divide is limiting the opportunities for research to provide real insight into seemingly intractable problems.

Corporate sustainability reporting of major commercial banks in line with GRI : Bangladesh evidence

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the tendencies of sustainability reporting by major commercial banks in Bangladesh in comparison with global sustainability reporting indicators outlined in the GRI framework together with banks' predilection toward reporting 16 GRI financial service sector (FSS) specific performance indicators.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on the GRI G3 guidelines, the paper investigated banks' reporting in five broad areas of sustainability, such as environment, labour practices and decent works, product responsibility, human rights and society. The 2008/2009 annual reports of 12 major commercial banks listed on Dhaka stock exchange were analysed and coded using a content-based technique.

Findings – The results show that information on society is addressed most extensively with regard to extent of reporting. This is followed by the disclosures prepared on decent works and labour practices and environmental issues. Furthermore, the disclosures of product responsibility information and the information for human rights are rather scarce in banks' reporting; on the subject of FSS-specific disclosures, only seven items out of 16 are disclosed by all sample banks.

Research limitations/implications – The findings of the study indicate that Bangladeshi commercial banks' social disclosures could develop in this style to become more holistic and over time (in association with the country's central bank involvement) to resemble a type of structured reporting to the point where they are properly labelled per se.

Originality/value – The study contributes to the social disclosure literature, in particular in a developing countries banking sector context, seeing as it disseminates evidence of the standing on social disclosures practices at the level of GRI with developing countries' banks data.

From design for ecologically sustainability to facilities management through building intelligence and knowledge management

Ecological sustainability basically concerns environmental protection and social benefits. An ecologically sustainable development is based upon reduced energy usage, increased efficiency, and upheld social responsibility; and it should be properly evaluated by financial, environmental and social aspects. Council House 2 (CH2) is claimed to change the way of Australia approaches in ecologically sustainable design and construction. This is the ‘Six-Star design and built’ green star facility assessed by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), and the 10-story city council building was completed and opened in 2006, totally A$11.3 million was invested for the sustainability features. CH2 protects the environment, when it compares with the old council house, and is expected to reduce electricity consumption by 85%; reduce gas consumption by 87%; produce only 13% of the emissions; and reduce water mains supply by 72%. In this paper, the author examines its design reports and the researches paper, in the form of knowledge base, to case-study how the sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency of CH2 work. By leveraging the existing CH2 sustainability knowledge, design and building professions can learn and imitate it in further ‘green’ design without ‘re-inventing the wheel’; facilities executives can also use the existing knowledge to identify steps to boost up the facilities’ operating efficiency.

Sustainability evaluation, life cycle assessment and facilities management for Geelong Retail Development

Value management is a technique used during the design stage to justify cost and worth of a proposal. Designer must never center only to save capital expenditure but consider holistically the whole building life which will be sustainable. Therefore, sustainability evaluation must adopt a long term view and will properly include three crucial elements: economic, social and environmental. Lack of awareness of value management during the design stage of a building project will adversely impact on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and facilities management (FM). This paper provides a review of the sustainable elements that must be considered when designing and costing a new retail development in the Geelong region of Australia and how these factors influence the whole building life. The result of this research helps to create a greater understanding of the different attributes that will affect the LCA and FM decisions made on sustainable development in this and other regional Australian cities that are undergoing major population growth.

Embedded restricted Boltzmann machines for fusion of mixed data types and applications in social measurements analysis

Analysis and fusion of social measurements is important to understand what shapes the public’s opinion and the sustainability of the global development. However, modeling data collected from social responses is challenging as the data is typically complex and heterogeneous, which might take the form of stated facts, subjective assessment, choices, preferences or any combination thereof. Model-wise, these responses are a mixture of data types including binary, categorical, multicategorical, continuous, ordinal, count and rank data. The challenge is therefore to effectively handle mixed data in the a unified fusion framework in order to perform inference and analysis. To that end, this paper introduces eRBM (Embedded Restricted Boltzmann Machine) – a probabilistic latent variable model that can represent mixed data using a layer of hidden variables transparent across different types of data. The proposed model can comfortably support largescale data analysis tasks, including distribution modelling, data completion, prediction and visualisation. We demonstrate these versatile features on several moderate and large-scale publicly available social survey datasets.

Promoting obesity prevention together with environmental sustainability

There is mounting evidence that current food production, transport, land use and urban design negatively impact both climate change and obesity outcomes. Recommendations to prevent climate change provide an opportunity to improve environmental outcomes and alter our food and physical activity environments in favour of a ‘healthier’ energy balance. Hence, setting goals to achieve a more sustainable society offers a unique opportunity to reduce levels of obesity. In the case of children, this approach is supported with evidence that even from a young age they show emerging understandings of complex environmental issues and are capable of both internalizing positive environmental values and influencing their own environmental outcomes. Given young children's high levels of environmental awareness, it is easy to see how environmental sustainability messages may help educate and motivate children to make ‘healthier’ choices. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a new approach to tackling childhood obesity by tapping into existing social movements, such as environmental sustainability, in order to increase children's motivation for healthy eating and physical activity behaviours and thus foster more wholesome communities. We contend that a social marketing framework may be a particularly useful tool to foster behaviour change beneficial to both personal and environmental health by increasing perceived benefits and reducing perceived costs of behaviour change. Consequently, we propose a new framework which highlights suggested pathways for helping children initiate and sustain ‘healthier’ behaviours in order to inform future research and potentially childhood obesity intervention strategies.

Sustainable development in developing countries: the role of social entrepreneurs

This article adds to the ongoing debate on the relationship between poverty reduction, profits, and environmental sustainability. Drawing from the literature, it presents a conceptual model with propositions to explain how social entrepreneurs can lead to sustainable development in developing countries. These propositions are further strengthened by using a descriptive case of Waste Concern—an initiative of social entrepreneurs—in Bangladesh. Findings illustrate that, despite contextual constraints in developing countries, it is possible to have sustainable development with no trade-off between poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. This win-win outcome is possible through the innovative approaches and creative thinking of social entrepreneurs who, rather than being hindered by contextual constraints, act as catalysts for sustainable development. The findings have implications for academics and policy-makers, highlighting the significance of supporting social entrepreneurs to come up with innovative methods for sustainable development.

Evaluation of housing developments for sustainability using a multi-criteria approach

New housing developments in Australia, particularly on Greenfield sites on the edge of existing urban centres, need to be sustainable in environmental and social terms if long term problems are to be avoided. Sustainability is multi-dimensional and existing analyses have been found to be inadequate in assessing housing developments holistically. This paper describes research which has used five criteria (energy use, resource use, neighbourhood character, neighbourhood connectivity and diversity), representing 31 indicators, to assess three housing precincts of a regional city in southern Australia. The method has been found to produce useful assessments of sustainability. The method has the potential to inform future housing developments and to be used to improve existing suburbs.

An empirical study of the world price of sustainability

The core goal of this study is to empirically investigate whether there is a “world price” of corporate sustainability. This is assessed in the context of standard asset pricing models—in particular, by asking whether a risk premium attaches to a sustainability factor after controlling for the Fama–French factors. Both time-series and cross-sectional tests are formulated and applied. The results show that (1) global Fama–French factors have strong power to explain global equity returns and (2) sustainability investments have no significant impact on global equity returns. The absence of a significant relationship between sustainability and returns implies that large institutional investors are free to implement sustainability mandates without fear of breaching their fiduciary duties from realising negative returns due to incorporating a sustainability investment process.