Social and environmental goals are often mutually reinforcing. Urban forms may encourage social sustainability as well as social inclusion or may have the potential to create areas of crime and social exclusion. The issues of relationship between sustainable development and urban form have given birth to new paradigms of design approach such as new urbanism, the compact city and the eco-city. This paper examines the impact of urban form on social sustainability at the neighbourhood level. It seeks to better understand the relationship between urban form and social sustainability by comparing three neighbourhoods with dissimilar urban forms in Delhi, India. Household surveys and observation surveys in these three neighbourhoods were conducted, and it was found that the urban form of a neighbourhood plays a very important role in creating a socially sustainable residential neighbourhood. The study established that social interactions within the communities are higher when dwelling units are placed around the public realm or common open space. The study demonstrated that provision of high quality and well-located open space at the precinct level, mixed land use and good accessibility to the public realm and social infrastructure play an important role in increasing the social sustainability of the neighbourhood.

Amid rising global temperatures and a changing physical environment, climate change has led to the development of a new social group called “Climate Migrants or Climate Refugees.” In 1995 approximately 25 million people worldwide were considered to be environment or climate refugees; it is anticipated that this number will increase to 200 million by 2050. Over the last decade rising sea levels, tropical cyclones, flash floods, soil salinity, and river erosion have emerged as the environmental or climatic push factors that have forced highly exposed and vulnerable coastal communities to migrate. In most cases people abandoned their settlements in rural and coastal areas and moved to towns and cities. Such push factors lead to chaotic and overwhelming levels of urbanization with attendant congestion, poor housing, and pollution choking urban areas. Planning systems in developing countries like Bangladesh have found it difficult to accommodate climate change-related migration and uncontrolled urbanization. Climate change is a major challenge for most coastal countries and this issue has to be addressed at various levels of planning including national, regional, and urban contexts. Consequently planning policy and practice need to evolve a vertically integrated decision-making framework linking national, regional, and local planning to address climate migration.

Urban green space plays an important role in enhancing the quality of environment especially for urban biodiversity. Declining biodiversity around the world has received much attention among academics, professionals and citizens. The United Nations has declared year 2010 as the ‘International Year of Biodiversity’. Urban biodiversity movement is important to ensure healthy city environments. Despite this ongoing movement, urban dwellers have little knowledge about conservation of biodiversity particularly wildlife. Moreover, biodiversity has received little attention from built environment practices (Brown & Grant, 2005; Niemelä, 1999). In general, urban wildlife habitat is protected as reserved forest. Many species of wildlife are generally found in such reserved forests. In comparison, the scale of urban parks in Kuala Lumpur is massive, much larger than protected forests. This paper presents the situation of urban wildlife species and the quality of habitats in Kuala Lumpur. It is found that many factors contribute to the healthy conservation of urban wildlife such as quality and variety of habitats, ornamental versus native vegetation and ecological design. The findings highlight that common urban birds are dominant in urban green spaces regardless of the size of the green spaces. However, only larger urban green spaces help protect species. Finally, the study concludes that urban wildlife in Kuala Lumpur is rapidly declining and that there is a greater need for the community and stakeholders to promote programs and activities to preserve and enhance urban wildlife. Development of comprehensive acts, policies and guidelines are vital for urban wildlife protection.