sustainable development primer

An Approach

Any enterprise who is an internationally recognised brand must embrace a quality system for their product. This primer is to be derived from a strong philosophy. Their approach for a green development must be all encompassing, including the appointment and selection of all experts and specialists engaged for any of their project. To this end the developer or Enterprise must engage specialist teams assigned to undertake such programmes as sustainability developments must signal an equally elaborate and sophisticated approach methodology in their Implementation.

Enterprise need to take a long view in terms of their development [product] to culminate in deliverables of the highest quality. Their long term plan in terms of manifestation of all their projects may commence perhaps with this Primer.


Picking the Right Team

A fundamental resource for this primer will be the choicest Project Manager. They make or break the scheme of things and will be key to the master framework for setting up intelligence at various levels for the rest of the team, being their sub-consultants, and also other experts to be employed or engaged for more detailed designs, for instance harnessing wind if anything or recycling ground or brown water. The Project Manager necessarily oversees the appointment of all consultants and advises on the overall programme strategy and objectives. They also make recommendations to enhance design quality from the start, as well as protecting the interest of the Enterprise as their Client, including the demarcation and outline of all planning and architectural aesthetics and general artistic direction of the specified products within the development. All prerequisite Endorsements and Certification [culminating in a Design Guide or Quality Manual] of all presribed activities will have been properly managed and guaranteed. Such considerations will give rise to a sound investment on the part of the Developer or Investor, if not for the households and communities benefiting from it.


Adopting a New Philosophy

Our natural resources are fast depleting. Luxury is to be measured in the new terms, i.e. open space is no longer considered wasteful, rather a measure of success, a new paradigm in town and country planning. Significantly we are aiming at returning the park concept to neighbourhoods. Open space and high density are designed to be mutually beneficial as we find tall buildings fast becoming a formula for a quality urban design strategy - without question. We need to write into our Design Guides that development parcels must adopt high rise buildings, as many as possible. With this increased density, we emphasize the resultant open space and parkland as key features to the Scheme. Cash flow benefits to adopting this strategy are obvious, as indeed the reduced footprint or plinth area, yet another bonus to the development. As Project efficiency rises, and the site deterioration is brought to minimum we have the beginnings of a new philosophy to the business of delivering development products at the scale that all enterprise must aspire to embark upon. The second equally important agenda for the project is one of delivering the framework but not the finish products. This is an environmentally sound investment plan for both developer as well as investor. The final definition is held by end user, the masterplan is defined in its final form by actuality and not design.


About Being Green

This primer can benefit any developer in terms of measurable impacts on the environment from the word go. In business terms it is already very substantial what developments such as this can contribute to a corporation's positioning in the global market. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development will define how such activities and projects can add to the overall management of world resources abut more precisely the communities and households derived from such development. A fundamental change must immediately take place for the business operations side as well as how they wish to be perceived and how they wish the development to work as a marketing tool for their larger vision of embracing the green policy. One of the ways to promote this ideology is to use recyclable materials and engage only the most sustainable materials in every aspect of construction from start to finish. An urban Design Guide is adopted to control the implementation of all buildings for all future developments.

Another good reason why this blueprint or primer can make a big difference is the underlying concept of letting Nature inform the any or all of the built work that is to be derived from the masterplan. The built form and the supporting infrastructure of the plan makes borrowing everything from Nature essential to best protect any investment. What is to be achieved in a green masterplan is the experience and not the design.


Implementation is Everything

It is extremely important to ascertain from the onset that the mix must have been well investigated and researched to deliver the commercial aims of the Development. Each product within the masterplan must have been well defined, by economists but also Architects and Designers, and then programmed carefully to be delivered to as prescribed in a project schedule [in which other term is known as phased]. Here is actually the crux: The success of the masterplan is simply its execution, more than its concept, reflecting a an exacting calculated form at each phase of the work, delivered to condition the development to achieve a certain density at the right time, and a certain flavour or character at any one given time. This is how it needs to be phased, not against some commercial agenda, although strictly speaking this is also a note-worthy consideration. They are not at all mutually exclusive. Demographic studies and physiological and other socio-ecological maps of the development are tracked and retraced until final stages of the development has been accomplished. This so called Blueprint is time mapped and appraised through a development wide design manual and development guide, serving as a monitoring device throughout all of the implementation phase. We also expect each phase to morph and evolve almost organically and with measured and calculated unpredictability. If the masterplan achieves its target prematurely so much the better. If we exceed its target any given time, whereas the built form or the urban plan has not achieved the final stages of completion as planned, the project would have reached maturity in advance of its due completion, and this would be totally acceptable result. At each phase of the work the project data is fed back into an intelligence programme which decides its final fate, whose form we can expect to differ greatly from the original.