Wealth and the Built Environment

The need to address global environmental problems is urgent. The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cover a wide range of global concerns, from poverty, hunger, and gender equity to justice and climate action, showing that whatever sustainable development is supposed to be, it is not only about climate change mitigation. The SDGs form a list of concerns to fix the world by dealing with sustainability matters without losing interest in development. Concerningly, the SDGs still have faith in economic growth and technological innovation as the means of fixing all global concerns, including climate change. The assumption is that with wealth and innovative thinking, development will happen sustainably. However, what is not questioned is whether solving development and sustainability problems through economic growth for the accumulation of wealth for the few has led to many of the unequal development and environmental problems we have. If unfair growth and wealth accumulation have been part of the problem, how can they be part of the solution? There is easily enough money in the world to fix the climate change problem. The problem with the SDGs is that their fulfilment relies on wealth creation without the fundamental concomitant of wealth redistribution. Without redistribution of the wealth created in the name of development, there cannot be a reduction in inequality. It is wealth that sits at the centre of this problem. What is stopping the spending of money by the wealthy countries that create most of the emissions on affordable clean energy, the seventh SDG? The one common driver of change affecting both sustainability and development that has not been included in the SDGs is wealth, the central focus of this book. 

SDG 11 - sustainable cities and communities - presents a further paradox unless the issue of wealth and its fair distribution is grasped. Cities are the places where wealth is generated but are also places where only a minority are wealthy. The wealth generated in cities leads to higher consumption of resources, higher emissions, and higher disparities and inequalities. However, any version of a sustainable future will happen in the built environment that will be built according to current ideals, like the present belief in overcoming all humanity's problems by becoming wealthier. A fundamental assumption of this book is that the first step toward a fairer habitat that can maintained with the resources available is only possible if we stop designing cities and buildings as if everyone were wealthy or had to become wealthy. To achieve this goal, it is essential to identify and raise awareness of the impact of wealth, to question how the myths about the advantages of wealth were built, where they come from, what shape they take in the built environment and who benefits from them. To what extent has the built environment been formed with the idea of accumulating wealth for a few, not the many, or with the thought of preserving resources for the future? Is preserving resources still the goal of those creating a built environment now that will be used by generations to come? Conversely, has its creation been dominated by ideas of wealth accumulation to be enjoyed in the present rather than thinking about the future? Will the type of built environment being created now be useful for future generations? Are those creating this built environment in tune with the goals of sustainable development? It is essential to probe the answers to these questions in order to expose the ideology of wealth, which is the major impediment to both thinking and aiming at any feasible path to sustainable development for everyone and achieving the SDGs.