A new perspective on the environmental impacts of planning: A case study of Cardiff's International Sports Village

Abstract Typical responses to the challenge of urban sustainability are to develop principles of development. Planners have also been keen to embrace new initiatives on decision making, such as sustainability appraisal, to ensure explicit consideration of environmental or sustainability factors in plan making. Despite the rhetoric surrounding urban sustainable development there is little evidence to show that change is happening sufficiently quickly in practice. Spatial planners and those that they work with, such as economic development, tourism or transport professionals may lack clear ideas about how to deliver more sustainable urban forms. So, how might issues of environmental equity be brought into the sphere of public policy decision making? How might citizens' consumption activities be connected with their global impacts? And how might different professionals work with a common language such that they can recognize the environmental impacts of development and, perhaps, agree on priorities for action? This paper explains how an Ecological Footprint was constructed for a key development—International Sports Village—in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. The process of preparing the Ecological Footprint is used to reflect on how environmental decision making might be understood and how the results might be used.