Reconfiguring “the Social” in Sustainable Development: Community, Citizenship and Innovation in New Urban Neighbourhoods

In April 2014 London’s Royal Society of Arts (RSA), a 250-year old organization that describes its purpose as finding innovation and practical solutions to today’s social challenges, organized a conference titled “Developing Socially Productive Places”. The event brought 100 delegates to the RSA’s central London office to debate how investment in the built environment can strengthen local communities by contributing to economic and social productivity. Among the conference delegates were urban planners, architects, property developers, housing associations, local government officials, social enterprises, and a former housing minister. The RSA’s Chief Executive, Matthew Taylor, introduced the conference by calling on delegates to consider the importance of gaining a deep understanding of how communities work and how people understand their own places in order to make investments in the built environment more effective. He invited delegates to collectively develop new approaches, policies, and potentially institutions, to make this happen

Innovating places: a new role for “Place difference”

This paper develops the idea of “place difference” as a practical tool for supporting place-based social innovation. Originally developed by US sociologists, Harvey Molotch, William Freudenberg and Krista Paulsen, “place difference” provides a framework for thinking holistically about local context, change and innovation. The “place difference” model analyzes the multiple connections between people, organizations, ideas, opportunities, cities and neighbourhoods, and how they “lash up” to create place-specific processes and outcomes. We explore how “place difference” can be developed as a practical tool to increase understanding about local dynamics, how they can shape the success and outcomes of interventions and how they can boost or frustrate innovation

Transformers: How local areas innovate to address changing social needs

Innovation in public services is going to prove crucial to the UK’s ability to meet the social challenges of the 21st century. However, at the moment, the UK does a poor job of developing innovations in the public sector. We are particularly weak in using innovations in one service to improve public services in others in the same locality or nearby. Historically, nearly all innovation policy has been tailored to the needs of for-profit manufacturing sectors. However, there is an increasing thirst for understanding how finance, policy and institutions can support Social Innovation. This report draws on extensive research, including literature reviews and case studies from around the world, and from interviews. The Young Foundation collaborated with NESTA to produce this report. It looks at successes as well as failures. It aims to clarify which conditions best support and sustain local social innovation and it provides guidance to future practitioners and policymakers

Social sustainability and new communities: Moving from concept to practice in the UK

Social sustainability is an emerging field of urban planning policy and practice. While a social dimension to sustainability is now widely accepted as important (alongside environmental and economic dimensions) it is under - theorized and not clearly defined in policy discourse or practice. Much academic work about social sustainability focuses on defining and theorising the multiple and fluid interpretations of the concept, ranging from philosophical and political ideas of human rights, wellbeing, equality and social justice, to related ideas of community social capital and empowerment. This paper argues that closer attention should be paid to the practical and operational aspects of social sustainability, in particular, to understanding how the concept is translated by different actors and used as justification for making decisions about interventions and investments in the material and social fabric of cities

Design for Social Sustainability

This report from Social Life, a Young Foundation venture, was originally commissioned by the Homes and Communities Agency as part of the “Future Communities- Social Life” programme. It sets out a framework and online resource for built environment professionals and policymakers involved in planning, design, and creating communities and cities. It is based on an international review of new towns and communities and describes why some flourish and others fail. It finds that communities that do not work socially, at best fail to flourish, or at worst, spiral into decline. Critically, it finds that support services and interventions need to be designed at the right time for communities to function well in the long term, and provides practical advice about understanding how communities function socially