SIA has considerable potential to give social criteria their rightful place alongside economic and environmental criteria in decision making (Stolp et al., 2002; Taylor et al., 2004; Burdge, 2004) and its holistic perspective provides a useful mechanism to increase the awareness of planners, decision-makers and the whole community about the social and cultural aspects of a specific planned development project (Sairinen and Kumpulainen, 2006; Ahmadvand et al., 2009). This results in better management of development projects and a more inclusive process by involving key stakeholders. Additionally, it makes projects more socially sound by minimizing or mitigating adverse social impacts, maximizing social benefits, ensuring that projects are designed to “fit” the target populations and is part of a democratic process in which equity, transparency and ownership are ensured through public participation (Francis and Jacobs, 1999; Vanclay, 2012; Pisani and Sandham, 2006; Sairinen et al., …show more content…
Despite continuing debates over the primary purpose of SIA and by considering all of SIA benefits and costs, the scope of SIA practices has widened considerably (Lockie et al., 2009). This widened scope along with SIA’s link to scientific research and policy and decision-making processes (Pisani and Sandham, 2006) has given a hybrid nature to SIA (Sairinen and Kumpulainen, 2006; Sairinen et al., 2010). The extent or duration of impacts in time and space is also being considered within the SIA (Schirmer,