ancient cities

economies are able to benefit diverse social groups
and create a high quality of life while not drawing
down natural capital.
Key elements of the sustainable city have
appeared in various forms in the past century.
Ebenezer Howard’s famous Garden City, for example,
was an early attempt to more holistically
marry the city with nature, by eliminating polluting
industries and housing smaller concentrations
of people surrounded by farms and countryside.
The Garden City also brought social and economic
considerations together with ecological ones, by
creating a viable economic model for the development
and useful employment for its residents.
Patrick Geddes—a contemporary of Howard and
considered along with him a father of modern
town planning—looked back to the medieval town
as the template for his “neotechnic” city, which
would have ample open space (made available by
decanting heavy industry to the countryside) as
well as greenbelts. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre
City would have harmonized urbanism and
nature by eliminating the city altogether by
housing families on individual agricultural plots
connected by speedy roadways and electronic
communication.
Understanding Sustainable Development
Depending on how it is interpreted, sustainable
development may either coexist with or challenge
the “dominant paradigm,” or the neoclassical
worldview, which posits an “empty world” that
must be transformed by the human use of resources
in order to have any real value. In this world lives
a utility-seeking homo economicus (economic
man), for whom resource consumption is a matter
of rational decision making and self-interest. This
fundamental model is reflected in two major
schools of thought in sustainable development: socalled
weak and strong sustainability. The first
operates within the neoclassical paradigm, and the
second opposes it.
For adherents of “weak” or “technological” sustainable
development, continued economic growth
is considered essential and indeed should be encouraged
so as to raise living standards in developing
nations. It also accepts that human beings as economic
actors will not be able to control their habits
as consumers. Therefore, unsustainability
Sustainable Development
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becomes a matter of more accurate pricing, better
policies, and sufficiently “green” technologies to
more effectively manage consumption. A powerful
element of this form of sustainable development
also rests on the assumption that manufactured
capital—particularly advanced green technologies—may
substitute for natural capital. Such substitution,
as a practical matter, makes easier the
development of indicators, as it facilitates the use
of existing measures of progress, such as the gross
domestic product (GDP). The most basic assumption,
however, is that both economies and nature
may be managed and that this management is to
be undertaken by existing elites—policymakers,
financial institutions, scientists, and governments.
“Strong” or “ecological” sustainable development,
by contrast, rejects these assumptions. Far
from being a matter of adjusting prices and policies
within the existing system, it is the current paradigm
associated with economic growth and development
that is itself seen as the problem. In this
view, standard measures such as GDP cannot accurately
calculate the inherent value of natural capital
in terms of ecosystem services, such as purifying air
and water. As such, it is not possible for elites to
manage nature, any more than they are capable of
managing economies—particularly not in a way
that is socially equitable. Relying solely on the
development of green technology will be, at best,
an interim measure. A fleet of electric cars, for
example, while less polluting in use would still
require the consumption of vast resources to produce
and generate undesirable social consequences
in terms of urban form, quality of life, congestion,
and so on. Finally, rather than depending on topdown
processes utilizing existing structures and
elites to manage the transition to a green economy,
strong sustainable development advocates a bottom-up
perspective: increasing ecological literacy
so as to develop an informed, revitalized citizenry.
As “strongly” defined, then, sustainable development
integrates a number of concepts significant
in their own right, such as the intrinsic value of
nature, the development of social capital and the
strengthening of citizenship, and the need to reexamine
general assumptions concerning what constitutes
“progress” and how to measure it. It posits
a fundamentally ethical posture toward the natural
world and compels society to respect other species
and ecosystems.