Institutions, culture, and sustainable development

,

Property Management

ISSN: 0263-7472

Article publication date: 1 March 2006

467

Citation

Lai, L.W.C. and Chau, K.W. (2006), "Institutions, culture, and sustainable development", Property Management, Vol. 24 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2006.11324baa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Institutions, culture, and sustainable development

Being part of resource management, the professional arena of property management has been significant in making a contribution to the paradigm of “sustainable development” or “sustainability”. In the literature on sustainable development, there has been little rigorous analysis of the factors of institutional arrangements, culture, or the specificities of property management as a significant link in resource use, conservation, and enhancement.

This special issue of Property Management aims to promote interdisciplinary research on the arena of sustainability and property management in terms of institutional arrangements, culture, history and various facets of property management broadly understood as resource planning, management and development. The collection of articles in this special issue covers three crucial domains, namely:

  1. 1.

    theorising property management as a vehicle for sustainable development;

  2. 2.

    energy use and conservation; and

  3. 3.

    water resource management.

In terms of theorising property management for sustainable development, the article by Lawrence Lai plays a pioneering role in addressing for the first time the conceptual and theoretical relationship of property management and sustainability in terms of the institution of property rights with real life examples. Focusing on dilemma and opportunities posed by the question of exclusion (commencing with enclosure) versus open access for resources, Lai’s work articulates the role of property management under the institution of private property rights as a means of balancing access to resource use, exploiting opportunities of resource conservation and enhancement, internalising externalities and converting negative externalities into positive ones, and managing the exchange of ideas in order to formulate new innovations.

The transformation of negative externalities into positive ones is the crux of a win-win solution to property management for sustainable development. Sharing Lai’s concern with the problematic of rent dissipation under common property, Edward Yiu and colleagues have examined and offered a typology for various modes of governance for the management of common areas in various types of properties in different countries in their work. It argues that an endogenous assumption of institutional regime in property management practice greatly expands the flexibility of management. The work by Simon C.Y. Chen and Chris Webster is a treatise on the modern enclosure movement. It develops further the emerging literature on “gated communities” by evaluating the proposal of R.H. Nelson in privatising existing neighbourhoods by creating owners associations to replace the role of the municipal government, with a case study on Taiwan’s recent development in the use of associational co-ownerships and management in the Reshaping Retail Street project.

In the energy use and conservation category, there are three papers in this collection. The article by Richard Fellows argues that there is a need for an “absolute”, rather than a “relativist”, approach to energy use in order to achieve sustainability. In contrast, the work of Peter Gordon, predicated on standard Hayekian economic propositions that stress the potency of a spontaneous order, argues a top-down planning and management approach in favour of decentralised decisions. This paper links the growth of wealth and welfare in history with the broadening responsibilities of property managers. As the first paper to evaluate the environmental benefits of recent amendments to the British Building Regulation (Part L) with a view to controlling CO2 emissions, the work of Marco Yu in fact deals with a major and tricky theoretical problem for sustainable economics: the choice of the applicable social discount rate in shadow pricing as a means to conserve energy and resources.

In terms of water resource management, there are two complementary articles. The work of Danny Lam, a comparative study of the irrigation agencies in Nepal and Taiwan, deals with the micro-institutional aspects of fresh water supplies and management, whereas that of Stephen Davies addresses the ocean as a global strategic and life resource. Davies concludes: “The argument contends that because of the social and historical status of the sea and those who earn their living from it, comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the sea and its depths is conspicuously lacking, as is a sympathetic understanding. Historically, this has led, where attempts to manage the sea’s resources are concerned, to a misconceived application of terrestrial legal concepts and approaches to an indivisible whole upon which, as a whole, life itself depends.” For marine resource managers, Davies’ advice is instructive.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the research group on Sustainable Cities of The University of Hong Kong for the research pertaining to this special issue.

Lawrence W.C. Lai, K.W. ChauGuest Editors

Related articles