ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION: THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CERTIFICATION PROTOCOLS

Architectural and urban design is at the center of a recent scientific and disciplinary debate investigating several limits and contradictions: on one hand, concerns due to modified social practices; on the other hand, regulatory densification, scarcely capable to intercept inconsistencies and varieties of social innovation. Although it is widely accepted that environmental certification protocols at the buildings scale pay little attention to social dimension of sustainability, their recent evolution at the neighborhood scale is leading to a greater integration of human factors issues and participatory practices, able to pursuit aims of social justice, enhancing the design ethical dimension. It could be appropriate to increase the weight of the different aspects of sustainability, in terms of the specificity of thematic areas, which are often only nominally represented or described through limited and partial visions. The full accessibility of the places, at different scales, and strengthened some areas almost completely absent, such as socio-cultural and local identities, and the so-called institutional ones, which relate to the binding rules and practices, should be introduced. Protocols for neighborhood could thus play the role of framework systems, by detailing particular areas of inquiry in relation to the questions emerging from local and social instances.