Social sustainability and new neighbourhoods: Case studies from Spain and Germany

Book chapter, 2019

This chapter explores the interpretation and implementation of social sustainability principles into the design and development of new neighbourhoods using the case studies of Rieselfeld in Freiburg, Germany, and Polvoranca in Madrid, Spain. Through the implementation of community infrastructure and urban design features to facilitate social interaction, as well as a mix of housing styles and tenures to create a population mix reflective of the wider community, these neighbourhoods appear to embrace the traditional notion of the geographical or “place” community. However, the relevance of the neighbourhood as a meaningful contemporary social entity has become less clear in recent years, because of the restructuring of lifestyle patterns and social relations over space, as a result of advances in transport and communications technology. Furthermore, urban development patterns have increasingly come to reinforce distance intensity through the separation of residential development from other urban functions and land uses, in both car-oriented suburban development and transit-oriented development (TOD) models.