Planning Sustainable Communities: An Appropriate Basis for Sustainable Residential Communities?

This chapter evaluates the impact of commodification of land and housing on the sustainability of the residential built environment. Commodification, an institutionalized practice in the western industrialized world, refers to the capacity of individuals to trade land and housing freely in the marketplace. This practice is so commonplace that it rarely undergoes any fundamental analysis in terms of its potential impacts. In order to consider the appropriateness of commodification to sustainable communities this chapter examines its effect on three factors identified as being important to their viability: the existence of a commonly held normative framework; the capacity of a community to reinforce or discourage individual behaviour, and; the need for appropriate resource requirements. The commodification of residential land and housing is found to encourage effects that may negatively impact upon the environmental and social sustainability of communities, and to potentially lead to their re-absorption into a less sustainable surrounding context. The paper also identifies a tendency of social and legal structures to protect the operation of the free market, which may act to undermine the capacity of communities to achieve self determination. Finally, it is suggested that the types of resources required by a community as a consequence of commodification may be inappropriate to the maintenance of long-term sustainability.