Social Bricks? Integrating Social Sustainability in Housing and Neighbourhoods

Can social sustainability be built? In this paper the potentialities and challenges of the concept of social sustainability are explored based on a collaboration project between the Danish Building Research Institute, a Danish social housing association and the Green Building Council Denmark, aiming to better integrate standards of social sustainability in the application of certification systems like DGNB. The paper relates theory on social sustainability to the ways it is used in practice, and discusses whether and how social sustainability can be measured and certified in renewal and construction of housing and neighbourhoods. It is put forward that a certification has to take into account the housing complex’ or neighbourhood’s relation to the surrounding city, its development over time, its flexibility towards future needs and its social organisation and operation. Further, the interplay between environmental, economic and social sustainability needs to be considered.