The Impact Edit: How Buildings Changed the “S” in ESG
When I first moved to the US, someone described a neglected project as "the redheaded stepchild" of their portfolio. I had to look it up. The phrase struck me as oddly specific, and once I understood it, oddly fitting for something I'd been watching in sustainability circles for years.
It’s a way of naming the thing that doesn’t quite fit, whose value isn’t obvious in the dominant language of the room. In ESG, that role has always belonged to the “S.”
Environmental sustainability has carbon, energy, water- the crisp grammar of measurement. Governance has boards and bylaws, the sturdy architecture of accountability. But social? Social has been left to wander the halls with a handful of intentions and no clear place to put them.
This is the same tension I wrote about recently: a growing impatience with promises, and a rising demand for clarity that can actually be checked.
It’s not that no one cared. It’s that there was no common standard for showing results.
Social sustainability was reported through policies, initiatives, and intent statements, with little ability to verify outcomes or compare performance. The language stayed aspirational because there was no reliable way to measure impact across projects.
But here's what I've come to believe: buildings are where the "S" finally finds its footing.
A Building is Social Proof
A building is not a metaphor. It is a decision made physical, repeated across ten thousand material choices, fixed into place for decades. The air inside it can be measured. The labor that made it can be traced. The community around it will remember what changed (or didn't) long after the press release fades.
Buildings don't represent social outcomes. They are social outcomes, rendered in concrete and glass and the daily experience of everyone who walks through the door.
The question has never been whether the impact exists. The question is whether we've known where to look. Over time, I’ve come to see social sustainability in buildings through a simple structure: five dimensions of social proof in the built environment. It’s a way of locating evidence: where it shows up, how it accumulates, and what it reveals once you stop speaking in ambition and start looking for traceable outcomes.
The first is people. Who breathes this air, walks these floors, cleans these windows at night? Health, safety, dignity, access, these aren't abstractions in a building. They're measurements waiting to be taken. The question is whether anyone's connecting them to a story that matters.
The second is place. A building is never just itself. It casts a shadow, draws a crowd, changes the rhythm of a block. Does the neighborhood move more freely because of it, or less? Did something open up, a park, a path, a possibility, or did something close? This is where a building meets its context, and the evidence lives in what the neighbors say when the architects have gone home.
The third is product. Every wall has a history. Every floor was made somewhere, by someone, under conditions that were either fair or not. For a long time, that history was invisible- buried in supply chains too long to trace. That's changing now. Slowly, imperfectly, but meaningfully. The receipts are starting to exist.
The fourth is partners. Buildings don't build themselves, and they don't run themselves either. Who got the contracts? Who maintains the systems? Who's still showing up years later, and under what terms?
The fifth room is community. Not the community inside the building, but the one around it. What did the project give back that it didn't have to? Local hiring, skills training, philanthropy that actually landed? Community is the room where you find out whether an organization showed up as a neighbor or just an address.
The "S" spent a long time as the middle child, waiting for someone to notice it had something to say. Buildings might just be the place where it finally learns to speak.
The Conversation Continues...
This post is part of our ongoing exploration into how the built environment offers the concrete proof that the “S” in ESG has been missing, turning abstract intentions into measurable reality through the five dimensions of social proof. As problem-solvers, we believe the best insights emerge when diverse perspectives meet. Have you encountered similar challenges or discovered different approaches? Share your story.
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We acknowledge that social sustainability is always a work in progress. These insights represent our current understanding, shaped by our partners, communities, and continuous learning.