Sustainable Urban Planning

3 Charter for Conservation with Development

The objective for this chapter is to set out a rationale for conservation with

development – first explored within the box 1.2 depiction of new-age pragmatics.

That theme is enlarged here as a ‘charter for conservation with development’;

spelling out the core basics for a ‘clean, green, caring yet also joyful and prosper-

ous’ community – stated simply as a matter of ‘doing well while doing good’. This

opening section offers up the ideal of neighbourhood-based sustainable urban

planning, particularly as a social objective for middle-income households, in con-

trast to bluntly physical standard suburbia and urban sprawl. This reasoning

derives from the socio-environmental paradigm established in chapters 1

and 2.

The advocacy is for a balanced style of fulfilled living, lever-

aged by an even-handed mode of administration which not only

knowswhatpolicy it is they deliver, but also whythey are deliv-

ering that policy. This rationale is beaten out by the neomodernist

hammer of empowerment upon the anvil of irrefutable facts

about closed-system ecologies. It is directed against lifestyles

which are unsustainable – and is forthose policies and actions

which are prospectively and potentially sustainable. This

attainable-sustainable reasoning is offered as realizable rather

than utopian, repelling eco-cultism, yet not avoiding prescription

if that is what it takes. What is called for are sustainable outcomes:

working from knowledge, through power, to balanced socio-

economic-environmental outcomes.

Out of the theory of change and a clarification of planning principles (previous chapters) emanates
conservation withdevelopment, the accomplishment of quality-of-life goals in balance with eco-
nomic growth. This is a ‘thinking globally, acting locally’ progression from established principles:
collated in this chapter as the Soft Pathways, Kicking the Energy Habit and Matrix constructs, all
precursors to the oncoming growth-pattern and urban-management reviews.

‘a fivefold increase in

economic output since

1950 has pushed human

demands on the

ecosystem beyond [that

which] the planet is

capable of sustaining.’

David F. Korten, 1995

At the Rio Summit,

1992: ‘The American way

of life is not up for

negotiation.’

George Bush (Senior),

US President