The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe

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Rob Krueger, David Gibbs
Guilford Press, Aug 30, 2007 - Science - 310 pages

Sustainability--with its promise of economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental integrity--is hardly a controversial goal. Yet scholars have generally overlooked the ways that policies aimed at promoting "sustainability" at local, national, and global scales have been shaped and constrained by capitalist social relations. This thought-provoking book reexamines sustainability conceptually and as it actually exists on the ground, with a particular focus on Western European and North American urban contexts. Topics include critical theoretical engagements with the concept of sustainability; how sustainability projects map onto contemporary urban politics and social justice movements; the spatial politics of conservation planning and resource use; and what progressive sustainability practices in the context of neoliberalism might look like.

 

Contents

Problematizing the Politics of Sustainability
1
Impossible Sustainability and the Postpolitical Condition
13
Looking for
123
Political Modernization and the Weakening
192
The Spatial Politics of Conservation Planning
238
Sustainability Water
266
Index
299
About the Editors
307
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Rob Krueger is Assistant Professor of Geography at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. His research focuses on economy-environment relations in the contexts of urban/regional economic development. David Gibbs is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Graduate School at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His work focuses on local and regional economic development, with a particular interest in the use of environmental policy to support and inform economic development policies.

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