Sustainability power to the people: BREEAM Communities certification and public participation in England

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.