Microsoft Word - AJCEB Vol.2 No.2 27.11.02a.doc BOOK REVIEW 80 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ECONOMICS AND BUILDING VOL.2 NO.2 BOOK REVIEW RED MAN GREEN MAN by Jayne Cox, David Fell and Mark Thurstain-Goodwin Professor Craig Langston* *Professor Langston is Chair of Construction Management at Deakin University and is one of the authors of Sustainable Practices in the Built Environment available through Butterworth- Heinemann. Red Man Green Man is a beautifully written and presented publication available from the RICS Foundation. It concerns indicators of urban sustainability, and the title and im- agery are derivative of pedestrian signals that guide and warn people about their jour- ney decisions. While the authors make it clear that sustainability means different things to different people in different places, there is a general conclusion that the con- struction and property industries need to engage in the sustainable development de- bate if they hope to effectively influence the setting of policies and targets rather than have a vision of urban sustainability thrust upon them. The structure of the publication is to look first at contextual issues, then review exist- ing urban sustainability indicators, and fi- nally discuss issues and implications for practice. The simple structure is logical and contains examples and links for the reader to pursue independently if required. How- ever, if the reader is interested in finding detailed information about existing urban sustainability indicators then s/he would be disappointed. This is not the intention of the publication anyway. While the target audience is stated as being “interested general readers”, it seems to focus too much on high level strategies and philosophies, and insofar as it is trying to make a case for a more active role by our industry, it may in fact fail to encourage it by its lack of “ready to use” solutions. Never- theless it is an interesting account of how the basic triple bottom line approach in- forms and frames the development of per- formance indicators. An important point is that these indicators are more likely to iden- tify trends over time for particular locations than calculate specific benchmarks that can be compared globally. Sustainability is per- haps more about making things better than reaching set goals. While the topic is obviously global, the dis- cussion does suffer slightly from a UK- centric outlook, which could have been more readily concealed. However it is an important and timely contribution to a de- bate that is ongoing and a problem that is arguably never-ending. It forms a useful platform for further studies into specific indicators, their relevance, how they work, what they measure and how they relate to practice, and hopefully this publication will be the start of a series by the RICS Founda- tion into this topical and critical field. The price of the publication is £17.99 and details can be found at http://www.rics- foundation.org or from the RICS.