Sustainability and built environment professionals: a shifting paradigm

The importance of the built environment to the health and well-being, as well as the economic prosperity, of society places a high level of responsibility on the professionals who plan, design, construct, manage and mantain the environment and our buildings. This chapter, written as part of a book examining the influence of sustainability on the wide curricula of higher education, appraises the ways in which graduates are being prepared to meet the challenge of building a sustainable future. It does this by examining current and planned initiatives being undertaken within built environment Higher Education in the UK as they relate to sustainability, in terms of knowledge, practice, process and importantly, as a paradigm and value set. It concludes by asserting that for the desired move to an inclusive low-carbon society to be acheived, sustainability must no longer been seen, as it often is, as a bolt-on to the curriculum, but as something that is truly embedded within the value sets, skills and knowledge sets of graduates as delivered thrugh curricula which are increasingly interdisciplinary.