Sustainability assessments of buildings, communities, and cities

This chapter focuses on sustainability assessments in the built environment through multicriterion rating systems. Recent interpretations of the concepts of sustainability, assessment, and sustainability assessment in the built environment are discussed before reviewing existing assessment systems. In particular, this chapter focuses on sustainability assessments of buildings, communities, and cities. A comparison between assessment systems at these different scales of the built environment is performed before focusing on the need of cross-scale evaluations. In particular, rating systems that have tools for the different scales such as BREEAM, LEED, and CASBEE are presented and compared. Each one of these systems bases the assessment on the summation of rates for different criteria, often selected in a no transparent way. The comparison shows that previous systems often accept weak sustainability when natural resources may be substituted by other priorities. Moreover, missing assessment criteria are indicated mainly within the social and economic dimensions of sustainability. This chapter also shows that the dynamicity of the built environment suggests considering the sustainability assessment systems as tools to monitor the evolution of the built environment as well as citizens’ lives. Finally, the chapter shows the importance of adapting sustainability goals and indicators of each specific situation.