Sustainable development criteria for Built Environment projects in South Africa (CSIR)

This paper is based on work undertaken for the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) developing a set of sustainable development criteria for built environment projects requiring environmental impact assessments (Gibberd 2010). Some aspects therefore refer specifically to Gauteng-based policy, although the general principals of the work are applicable to other areas of South Africa. The paper provides a definition of sustainable development and shows how this can be translated into objectives and criteria which can be used to guide the development of more sustainable built environment projects.