Sustainable Urban Planning

1 Sustainable and Ethical

What impresses the newcomer to the Anglo settler society nations of Northern

America and Australasia is how resource discovery, scientific and technological

invention, and political force have so powerfully and rapidly imprinted a ‘right-

ness’ over the last two hundred years (pastoralism and agriculture as well as

plantation forestry, along with urban settlement) and a conjoint ‘wrongness’ (flora,

wildlife and soil evisceration, along with much misery for the indigenous ‘first’

peoples). What is easily overlooked is that in earlier centuries the Old World was

also subjected to resource discovery, inventions and political forces which vastly

modified the landscapes of those times – sometimes to a state of disutility.

Hindsight, into the working relationship of the inhabitants of Anglo settler soci-

eties – North American and Australasian – is the context for this book. It is a

project which derives its rationale from a situation where most developers

in OECD settler societies acknowledge environmental issues in the breach,

and pursue projects for profit – a circumstance where the outcome for both

profit taking and environmental conservation clearly could be more mutually

supportive.

This scene-setting chapter focuses attention upon key issues explored in

three passages: firstthere is some delving into ‘development’, ‘planning’ and

‘sustainability’;secondthere is an attempt to deconstruct the meanings of ‘prop-

erty’, ‘interests’ and ‘neomodernity’; and the thirdpassage provides a foundation

understanding of sustainability in the neomodern context of the ‘triple bottom

line’ paradigm – which is an amalgam of growth, community, ethical and envi-

ronmental factors.

The historical connection between development and planning – that is between

pragmatic development and politically led planning – is not a conundrum of the

‘chicken or egg’ kind, for clearly the development thrust for investment return

Chapters 1 and 2 lay foundations: express definitions, establish theory, explore philosophical
understandings. These are precursors to the practical guidelines given in later chapters: the
‘Charter’ (chapter 3), ‘Growth Pattern Management’ (chapter 4), and ‘Urban Growth Manage-
ment’ (chapter 5). The reader versed in planning theory principles and philosophy, or bent on
getting to grips with planning practice, can make direct access to the Practice section.