Mainstreaming sustainable urban transport: putting the pieces together

Abstract

The term ‘sustainability’ has ploughed itself into mainstream development dialogue and literature, if not entirely into popular jargon. One does not need to look far to find references to sustainable housing, consumption, forestry, agriculture etc. The concept of sustainability – meeting present needs while maintaining the capability to meet future needs – has proved invaluable in making society explicitly aware of the need to pass on natural resources to future generations. Sustainability has also come to encompass a broader development agenda, focused on the balance of environmental, social and economic objectives. In this sense, sustainability has been useful in establishing a more level rhetorical playing field among possibly competing objectives. At the same time, the broadening of the meaning of sustainability and the increasing ubiquity of the term’s use runs the risk of watering down the meaning of the concept. When sustainability becomes associated with more and more, does it start to mean less and less?