The rural chartered surveyor as environmental manager

Abstract

Summary This paper considers how rural chartered surveyors in the UK have been responding to the increasing emphasis given to the concept of sustainable development. While recognizing the growing pressure both from clients and from professional leaders, survey results indicate a reluctance on the part of surveyors to embrace the concept of sustainable development, whether with respect to the management of their businesses or to client advice. Rather, evidence indicates that they have adopted a highly limited evocation of the term, concentrating primarily on the environment as a new market surface. Set in the wider context of the current debate over the competing environmental narratives of ecology and commodification, the paper suggests that rural chartered surveyors are, for the most part, firmly situated at the technocentric extreme of unsustainability. In making the case for a paradigmatic shift in the underlying emphasis of rural chartered surveyors’ environmental perceptions, therefore, the paper con...