Welcome to 'Planning for Sustainable Cities'

“We are struggling for the language now for a whole set of concepts that are urgent in our conversation...It’s a mess. But social transformations are messy.” (In Dresner 2002: 66)

This statement made by Donella Meadows, one of the authors of The Limits to Growth (1972) helps to encapsulate a key theme of this course. Sustainability is an essentially slippery, messy and difficult to define concept. Linking this with the practice of policy making creates an even more chaotic mix of ambiguity and uncertainty. But, as Jordon (2008) asserts, for those who wish to engage with the practice of sustainable development it is undoubtedly necessary.