Social Sustainability: A New Conceptual Framework

There is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies regarding social sustainability. The literature reveals that the “social” was integrated late into debates on sustainable development. This paper aims to fill this gap and proposes a new conceptual framework of social sustainability. We suggest that risk is a constitutive concept of sustainability and that the contemporary conditions of risk resulting primarily from climate change and its ensuing uncertainties pose serious social, spatial, structural, and physical threats to contemporary human societies and their living spaces. Within the framework of sustainability, we propose that social sustainability strives to confront risk while addressing social…

• IS
  Israel Science Foundation

  Award: 1908/14