Sustainability, awareness and the built environment

Sustainability within the Built Environment (BE) has become increasingly important over the past decade. Drivers for this include company image, pecuniary advantage, and because it is an environmentally responsible choice. Anthropogenically-caused climate change is the biggest challenge to the world today; the BE is one of the world’s largest producers of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, a known cause of climate change. It became evident that this, and sustainability in general, was largely unknown to the researcher’s peers. This apparent lack of awareness became the theory tested by the thesis. A simple point that could answer the research question, while the research aim provided a tool that could create awareness or enhance it. In addition to a literature review, a non-pure form positivistic methodology tested the awareness and understanding of sustainability with several of the BE’s stakeholders all of who are involved in the BE and its lifecycle. The surveys revealed the occluding power of the barriers and the influential nature of the drivers, which influence sustainability within the BE. However, it was evident that a general lack of awareness and understanding could influence these barriers and drivers individually, and en masse. Despite the formidable and proactive global framework that exists within the BE promoting a sustainable regime, the research demonstrated that true universal awareness of sustainability by the stakeholders was limited. The research aim became the development of the Sustainable Infrastructure Resource (SIR), a framework with the potential to promote sustainability awareness to every stakeholder in every context within the BE, everywhere. A universal awareness of sustainability in the BE is arguably our best weapon to achieve its genuine implementation, with the ultimate ambition of reducing GHG emissions thus arresting, or perhaps reversing climate change.