Paper presented at Smart and Sustainable Built Environments, Pretoria, 9-11 December 2015. 

Appropriate, comprehensive and effective policy, guidance, regulations, standards, and capacity have been identified as a major factor in the development of more sustainable built environments (Simmons, 2015; Melchert, 2007; Berke & Conroy, 2000; Huntzinger et al, 2007). If this is the case:

• What are the minimum policy, guidance, regulations, and standards requirements to support sustainable development?
• What are the minimum capacity requirements?

The paper develops and tests a framework which can be used to assess national built environment capacity and instruments in terms of their capability to support the achievement of sustainability targets.