Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050

17Understanding and Shaping Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050

Tim Dixon, John Connaughton and Stuart Green

‘There is nothing like a dream to create the future.’ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862)

‘Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.’ John F. Kennedy (US President, 1961–1963), address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, 25 June 1963

17.1 Introduction

The overarching aim of the book has been to bring together leading thinking on issues of new professional practice and the future of a sustainable built environment within an integrated programme of foresight thinking to 2050. In doing this, the book has focused on three main areas which are important in a built environment context to 2050:

• sustainability and the built environment
• changing professional practice
• transformative technologies and innovation.

Primarily using a foresight‐based approach for the majority of the chapters, and with a more qualitative, provocative practitioner‐based element to supplement the thinking on professional practice, these chapters have sought to focus on both construction and development issues as key elements in the built environment.

If we are to understand the ways in which we need to move to a more sustainable future in construction and development, then we need to understand not only the speed and complexity of change in the wider world, but also the disruptive nature of this change. ...