Social sustainability effect to the determination of sustainable building certification system criteria: Suggestions for Turkey

The challenges brought about by the changes in the environment, that has been created by human being to provide better living conditions for himself, led the environmental problems such as decrease in the natural resources and pollution, to raise to a critical level by the industrial revolution. Contemporarily, innovations provided by technology, while easing our lives, prompted fundamental changes in the communities' way of lives and exposed societal problems. Sustainable development, generated as an action against the environmental problems, broadened its extent in time to cover the societal problems and environmental, economical, and social sustainability were identified as the three dimensions of sustainable development. Social sustainability has not been paid as much importance as the environmental issues until recent years as a result of the difficulties in defining the themes it has covered. It is also apparent in the certification systems and the assesments have been limited to the environmental impacts of the buildings. However, sustainable development can be achieved by the applications taking into account the social dimension as well as the environmental issues. The involvement of the social sustainability properly in the assessment tools is essential for the achievement of sustainable development in Turkey. Based on the idea, this study, examines the definitions and historical processes of sustainability and social sustainability concepts. Afterwards social sustainability effect in the existing assessment tools were analysed and the study was completed by the suggestion of fundamental assessment criteria of social sustainability for the certification system that will be developed in Turkey.