eprintid: 10199569 rev_number: 6 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/19/95/69 datestamp: 2024-11-06 11:50:22 lastmod: 2024-11-06 11:50:22 status_changed: 2024-11-06 11:50:22 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Chantry, William creators_name: Turcu, Catalina title: Sustainability power to the people: BREEAM Communities certification and public participation in England ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C04 divisions: F39 note: © 2024 Springer Nature. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). abstract: Incorporating public participation into planning and construction practice is challenging, however, it is seen as a pre-requisite for the successful implementation of sustainable urban development. Sustainability certification schemes such as BREEAM have been instrumental in guiding practitioners and developers to plan, design and build to high sustainability standards, yet the evidence for how these standards draw on and are framed by public participation inputs and processes is scarce. This paper unpacks such evidence concerning the application of BREEAM Communities in England, by examining data from 12 certified developments, selected out of 28 such developments, which is then analysed through Chantry’s heuristic of seven political spaces of citizen engagement. Overall, the study finds uneven levels of public engagement across the various political spaces of engagement. Requirements for public participation are stringent at the later ‘proposal’ and ‘implementation’ stages, with the potential to facilitate high-quality engagement. However, such requirements are vague or poor at the earlier ‘information provision’ and ‘deliberation’ stages, where the public should be provided with tools to generate realistic and informed proposals. The paper reflects on implications for BREAM Communities processes and guidance and further extends Chantry’s heuristic by adding two new political spaces, ‘attitudes to participation’ and ‘timing of engagement’. This enhanced heuristic builds a more complete picture of the key politicised stages of the participation process during BREEAM Communities certification, and contributes to current theoretical and empirical debates on gauging the effectiveness of public participation in sustainable urban development not just in an English context but internationally. date: 2024 date_type: published publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s43621-024-00473-2 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2332852 doi: 10.1007/s43621-024-00473-2 lyricists_name: Turcu, Luciana lyricists_id: CTURC04 actors_name: Turcu, Luciana actors_id: CTURC04 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Discover Sustainability volume: 5 number: 1 article_number: 371 citation: Chantry, William; Turcu, Catalina; (2024) Sustainability power to the people: BREEAM Communities certification and public participation in England. Discover Sustainability , 5 (1) , Article 371. 10.1007/s43621-024-00473-2 <https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-024-00473-2>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199569/1/Sust%20Power%202%20People.pdf