Sustainability 2015, 7(7), 9417-9443; https://doi.org/10.3390/su7079417
Critical Connections: The Role of the Built Environment Sector in Delivering Green Cities and a Green Economy
Peter Newton 1,*
and Peter Newman 2
1
Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne 3122, Australia
2
The CUSP Institute, Curtin University, Perth 6102, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Tan Yigitcanlar and Md. Kamruzzaman
Received: 3 March 2015 / Revised: 9 July 2015 / Accepted: 10 July 2015 / Published: 17 July 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Planning, Development and Management of Sustainable Cities)
Abstract
The green agenda for cities and the economy in general is a major focus of global institutions and is increasingly a major national and urban priority. Core issues and best practice for built environment businesses were collated from published studies and used in a survey of Australian firms to see how committed they were to the green economy. The results show high awareness of the challenges and opportunities with 85% of firms having sustainability as an established agenda with senior management and over 20% of built environment firms deriving more than 50% of their sales from green products and services. This is much higher in design firms and is globally high. Whilst recognizing the scope for more engagement by industry in transitioning to a low carbon green economy, there is doubt within the built environment sector about how to create a business case for innovative green ventures and a lack of certainty or encouragement from government about how to proceed. View Full-TextKeywords:
green economy; built environment sector; eco-cities; sustainable urban development; green innovation; low carbon economy; socio-technical transition
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
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Newton, P.; Newman, P. Critical Connections: The Role of the Built Environment Sector in Delivering Green Cities and a Green Economy. Sustainability 2015, 7, 9417-9443.
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