Paper short abstract:

This presentation describes the (often unsuccessful) attempts by BREEAM Communities (a neighborhood sustainability assessment tool) and associated actors to intervene in the master-planning of 5 developments in the UK. The effectiveness of STS in studying marginal cases and actions is also discussed.

Paper long abstract:

Tools for assessing and certifying the sustainability of neighborhoods and cities have proliferated in recent years (1). BREEAM Communities is one such tool (2). These tools do not only assess and certify sustainability, but (among other things) organize, frame, and otherwise participate in the work of developing a 'sustainable' urban master-plan (3,4). In the case of their building-level counterparts these interventions seem to result in more sustainable outcomes (3,5,6). Whether this is the case at the neighborhood scale is not well understood.

To address this gap, this research conceptualizes BREEAM Communities as both an artefact and an assemblage of (varyingly (im)mutable) knowledge-claims and qualculative requirements, together with an ensemble of Assessors, spreadsheets, external standards, emails, and so on. Then, through interviews, observations, and documentary evidence (collection of which will be finalized in April of this year) from five case studies in the UK, associations between this BREEAM-ensemble and other actants are traced. Questioning focuses particularly on 1) its embeddedness and agency in the assembled networks of a development, 2) the mobility and mutability of inscribed knowledge-claims when translated into local development instances, 3) its participation in negotiation, deliberation, and otherwise (in-)qualculative events throughout the development, and 4) the (temporary) stabilization of those interventions.

The report presents results from this study, exploring how a new standard might (or might not) disrupt existing, obdurate assemblages in urban design and discusses the effectiveness of STS away from highly controversial and/or successful actants.