Paper from the PASCAL International Observatory Conference, "Making Knowledge Work: Building Sustainable Partnerships through Place Management, Social Capital and Lifelong Learning" October 2005, University of Stirling, Scotland This research aims to enable a fuller understanding of the role of design in the built environment from many social and cultural perspectives and is concerned to examine a wide range of ideas and notions from those interrogated in critical theory to those espoused in government policy. There is a need to address the critical contextualisation of our attempts to evaluate the individuals perception of their built environment and the effects this has on the individuals capacity.