TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOOD DESIGN: A SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATION FRAMEWORK AND A CASE STUDY OF THE GREENWICH MILLENNIUM VILLAGE PROJECT

This research aims to propose a sustainability evaluation framework at a neighborhood level and to draw out any transferable lessons for future development by analyzing a cutting-edge project towards sustainable neighborhood design, the Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) Project, using that framework. The results of the analysis suggest that the sustainability evaluation framework devised by this research can be used to effectively measure the project's level of progress towards sustainability, although further research is essential to more extensively apply, test, and modify the framework. The results also suggest that, overall, the GMV project aimed to achieve a significantly higher level of progress towards sustainability in most of the evaluation criteria, compared to conventional practice in the U.K. However, this project is moving slowly towards sustainability. In many aspects, the project's current practices in phases I and II have failed to meet the sustainability targets indicated in the competition proposal. Therefore, there are considerable doubts as to the project's likely success in creating a socially mixed and environmentally friendly sustainable community as envisioned. In addition, the research suggests that there exist perceptual, economic, institutional, and implementation barriers toward sustainability within current planning and design practices, and it highlights the need for setting sustainability targets, indicators, and benchmarks at a very early stage in order to prevent potential conflicts between key actors, which hinder progress towards sustainability.