Course Resources Archive

Your task is to review complex, interrelated aspects of sustainability including economic, social/cultural and environmental factors.  You investigate ways in which sustainability is currently managed, assess competing factors and make recommendations for strengthening sustainability in a selected community.

This module focuses on strengthening sustainability in communities, building on your understanding of community development, the planning system and sustainability.  It explores how, in practice, environmental, social and economic sustainability can be strengthened.  Sustainable community strategies, local development frameworks and community planning provide the context for this module.

Individually, or in a multi-agency team, you select a specific community as the focus of your study.  You explore policies, programmes and (internal and external) agencies that impact (positively or negatively) on the sustainability of the community. You recognise tensions between different aspects of sustainability and suggest ways in which these tensions might be reconciled, recommending feasible ways in which the community can become more sustainable. You are urged to learn from each other and from different disciplines including community development, local governance, economic development, planning and community safety.

You are encouraged to take an ‘asset-based’ approach, recognising that communities have capabilities and resources as well as the ‘deficit model’ that highlights needs and issues. You determine ‘capital’ assets (social, environmental and economic capital) that can be brought to bear to mutual advantage. You critically assess the value of community-based working.

On successful completion of the module the student should be able to:

i. Knowledge and understanding

1. Justify appropriate responses to the policies, responsibilities and practices of stakeholders in local communities
2. Analyse the tensions inherent in applying the concept of sustainability to local communities
3. Determine and apply appropriate activities for planning and managing sustainable communities
4. Critically assess community-based working

ii. Skills. 

1. Research, analyse, evaluate and apply information from a wide range of sources and disciplines
2. Reflect critically on your learning and application in practice

This is a distance learning module based on 300 hours study over an academic year.
Staff/student contact: 10% (residential school, face-to-face and online support)
Work-based learning: 40%
Student directed learning: 50%

The Library Catalogue contains full details of the current reading list for this module. Further details may also be found in the Module Guide.