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Origins of Sustainability in Thought

Robinson (2004) believes the vagueness around sustainability in urban regeneration is due to a continuing conflict between of two strands of thought, originating in late 19th century environmental literature, over how and why to preserve or conserve natural environments.  One school of thought advocated the preservation of natural areas in an undeveloped state.  This ‘preservationist’ perspective had its origins in European romanticism and used spiritual and romantic arguments.  On the other hand, the ‘conservationist’ perspective justified care of the environment due to enlightened self-interest, conserving land and resources for the use in the future with its origins in utilitarian thought.  Robinson argues that the conflict between the two perspectives on mans relationship to the natural world are as tangible in today’s sustainability literature as they were in the writing of 19th century scholars.

The concept of sustainable development originates in the conservationist approach whereby efficiency gains and technological advance are relied upon in order to overcome environmental problems.  Sustainability on the other hand derives from the preservationist approach and emphasises the need for fundamental shifts in values and cultural attitudes towards nature.  The differences in approach can be seen throughout Haughton’s outline of various models that seek to overcome urban environmental problems (1997).  The self reliant city model emphasizes the need for cities to reconnect with their hinterlands by making local economies more self-reliant within their bio-region so that the effects of consumption and waste are localised and can be managed at the local level.  This model advocates a new kind of economy where local economies become truly local.  Urban areas need to become reliant on their immediate hinterlands so that the negative externalities of consumption and waste that take place in the urban area directly impact on those that have caused the excessive negative externalities giving them incentives to moderate their behaviour unlike urban areas at the moment which are remote from their own negative effects.  This approach advocates a policy of decentralisation in which there are fewer large cities and more medium size settlements.  This approach is rooted in the sustainability and preservationist approach emphasising the need for people to fundamentally alter their behaviour and social attitudes.

Another approach has been to focus on planning and advocate the creation of new, more compact, city forms with greater building density and layouts designed to increase efficiency.  Thereby reducing the need to travel long distances, alongside policies encouraging the use of public transport this would reduce energy consumption.  This strategy takes the view that urban design and technology can alter the environmentally damaging way in which people behave in the city.  In the same vein is a more market oriented approach aiming to create externally dependent cities.  This refers to reform of market mechanisms to address the issue of environmental externalities.  This approach recognises that cities benefit greatly from externalising some of the environmental costs associated with growth but points out that the environmental costs of urban consumption are not captured by market pricing mechanisms because resources and waste streams are not properly valued to take account of their environmental and social impacts , in other words polluters should have to pay for the full environmental costs of their actions.  The last two approaches could be characterised as conforming to the sustainable development, conservationist approach with their anthropocentric emphases.  In broad terms it is possible to brand sustainability approaches as requiring radical changes in the methods of delivery of urban regeneration than sustainable development approaches, which would allow for the long term viability of economic growth and current ways of life through measures improving, but not radically different from, existing forms of urban regeneration.

References and Further Reading

Robinson, J. (2004) Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development, Ecological Economics, 48, pp.369-384

Krueger, R. and Agyeman, J. (2005) Sustainability schizophrenia or “actually existing sustainabilities?” toward a broader understanding of the politics and promise of local sustainability in the US, Geoforum, 36, pp.410-417

About the Author

Owen Stevens is project manager at Skyblu, a Worcester based company specialising in web design for charities .

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