‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

ENVIRONMENTAL 
MANAGEMENT 

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7 
Urban
Sustainability 
Assessment 
 
From predicting 
negative impacts to 
adding value
There is a growing diversity of assessment methods and approval processes designed to assist councils in 
predicting and mitigating the adverse impacts of developments within a triple bottom line framework.
1
The trend is towards assessing projects, plans and programmes using a broader geographic scale, 
time frame and scope of analysis. Due to the internet, there is also rapid dissemination and cross-
fertilization between jurisdictions and organizations on procedures, indicators and targets, which 
are then tailored to meet local concerns.
2
Given the growth and diversity of methods, therefore, we need a generic typology to compare and 
discuss them. For our purposes, assessment methods can be classified by whether they audit actual 
performance or predict future impacts.
Present (actual) performance
Methods for 
auditing
the actual performance of an existing operation, organization or development 
include:
•
Environmental audits
of buildings, designed to diagnose and improve the environmental
performance of existing developments (but usually just energy or lighting) [Chapter 8].
• 
Specification tools
to assist specifiers in selecting the best product or building component
that is available, and to educate designers [Boxes 28 and 29].
• 
Environmental reporting systems
, which assist business and industry in improving the 
environmental efficiency of their management and operations [Box 36].
•