Measuring the Social Sustainability of New Housing Development: A Critical Review of Assessment Methods

Social sustainability is a growing area of debate in the built environment, particularly in relation to housing. UK homebuilders have responded to organizational and policy drivers by developing ‘ex post’ assessment frameworks to measure the social sustainability of new housing development. The paper offers a critical perspective of these frameworks by: (i) examining the origins of the concept of social sustainability at neighborhood level; (ii) analyzing the critical challenges and research questions about social sustainability that the underlying methodologies raise; and, (iii) how such frameworks might be improved and developed further.