Urban Sustainability: Theoretical Perspectives on Integrating Economic Development and the Environment

There has been a growing concern with the adverse impacts of economic development upon the environment in recent years and a concomitant response in terms of policy initiatives. The policy discourse of sustainable development proposes that economic development and the environment can be integrated to give rise to “win-win” outcomes. Many policy initiatives have been developed at the urban, regional and local level and this scale is frequently emphasised as the most appropriate for policy implementation. However, this local emphasis is rarely justified and almost never explained theoretically. One of the dangers of this is the implicit assumption that integration is relatively straightforward and unproblematic. What is needed is a clearer theoretical focus that integrates environmental issues with economic approaches. It is argued here that there is potential to combine work from a specifically environmental focus, such as that on sustainable development and ecological modernisation, with work from a political economy perspective – particularly urban regime theory and regulation theory. The advantages of doing this are two-fold. First, it allows the recognition that the direction of economic development is not prescribed but open to social shaping. Second, and following on from this, it allows the recognition that action at the local level will itself be open to contestation and struggle. Sustainable development is thus an ideological and political issue, not just an environmental one.