Planning as Sustainable Development

This paper makes the case that planning should fully incorporate the notion of sustainable development (SD) and argues that SD is not achievable in any real way without attention to the substance and process of planning as it happens on the ground. Sustainable development should be a fundamental principle of planning but the concept is ambiguous. This paper distills a working definition of SD suitable for planners in terms of process and substantive criteria. The definition is derived mainly from an analysis of recent literature and shows that ecological sustainability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainability and that social and economic conditions must also be met The highest priorities in planning for SD are to ensure that plans address ecological issues and to improve decision-making processes to achieve vertical consistency between actions at local, national, and even international levels and horizontal coordination between development actions at all levels Despite the limited effectiveness of local decisions, there is so much that local communities can do for SD in their own interest and for the long-term benefit of the planet.