Sustainable Development

The effects of urban sprawl are however, highly debated. Urban sprawl generally associated with social issues including; social isolation, obesity, global warming, flooding and ecological degradation (Gottdiener and Budd 2005). Planners must work on improving city wide and local development quality, in reducing the need to use the motor vehicle, achieved by promoting and developing public services in proximity to residential units. In recent years the UK Government has increased housing density and brownfield development, and reduced financial incentives to ‘sprawl’. Reusing urban land where possible, rather than building on greenfield sites has assisted in the evasion of sprawling car-dependent suburbs.

3. Government Policy and Sustainable Brownfield Development

The UK’s strategic planning policy has been committed to the development of brownfield land for many years, as reflected in the large quantity of strategic guidance documents (OPDM 2006; ODPM 2005). Furthermore, the role of brownfield regeneration has been specified with new resonance due to the focus of the government policy on sustainable communities with PPS1 stating that 30% of new homes should be affordable housing and within a ten minute walk of both frequent public transport and necessary public services. Furthermore according to the PPS1, communities must now demonstrate a net gain in biodiversity and pay attention to the local production of food, examples of which can be observed across the world with the implementation of ‘urban farms’ (See Figure 1,2 and 3). Essentially the recommended outcome of this policy statement is to ensure a level of social and environmental self-reliance. highlighted the 1990s as an age of evolution for sustainable brownfield dev...

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...g the advantage of remediation financial saving, risk-based sustainable remediation is increasingly replacing typical method (recognised as more expensive and intrusive) of undertaking an entire remediation (Osborne Clarke 2012).

The SRF-UK's contribution to the move towards sustainable remediation is its 'A Framework for Assessing the Sustainability of Soil and Groundwater Remediation', which clarifies what 'sustainable remediation' is and how to evaluate it under a detailed set of indicators. It sets out, for the first time, the essential link between the principles of sustainable development and the criteria (environmental, social and economic) for selecting optimum land use design with sustainable remediation strategies and treatments. The Framework is considered to be a valuable addition to best practice guidance on risk management of land contamination.