Overview

This section will focus on the impact of being excluded from the ‘upside’ of human changes to the built environment – especially in relation to slum living. It will also consider the increased strain that human changes – and the sheer weight of human numbers – impose upon the natural environment. It will consider, briefly, what innovations or interventions are important for maximum impact to the triple bottom line for all citizens of the ASEAN region – using examples that have been implemented across the region. The range of potential interventions is vast: remedial work to improve air quality, high-tech interventions to improve connectivity, and enhancing ‘liveability’ of urban spaces to capture the best of the upside of human changes for everyone, and to minimise the downside of life in crowded spaces: all are concerns within ASEAN.

Key Findings

The built environment and climate change interact with one another – and amplify good or bad outcomes in each other: if considered holistically in development policy interventions, they can deliver to the triple bottom line.

To deliver positive outcomes, research, evidence and planning matter. Planned urban expansion can yield benefits but unplanned expansion can exacerbate social and environmental ills.

Community engagement in planned urban development will usually provide the best chance of liveable cities for the growing urban population.

Policy Implications

No aspect of the environment devised by human intervention can be developed sustainability if it fails to engage with environmental, social and economic concerns, equally.

An evidence-based approach to planning human intervention in the environment – especially in the built environment - is vital if urban areas are to be liveable for the next fifty or more years. ASCC has the reach to marshal the diverse human, environmental and demographic concerns in order to establish a sound knowledge base. The complexity of demographic changes, coupled with urbanisation and population fluctuations, invites a Foresight approach to urban planning in order to deliver the crucial conditions for decent lives now and into the future.

A central approach to gathering evidence is cost-effective but detailed policy and implementation should be executed at levels where specific context can be addressed, and communities involved in the planning and deliberation process.

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