Urban Sustainability

As a concept and a field of study, urban sustainability emerged out of the sustainable development movement that took off in 1987 with the publication of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future. Via the Brundtland report and the subsequent 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janeiro, sustainable development brought together the international priorities of poverty alleviation and environmental conservation, creating an agenda for simultaneous improvement in both situations worldwide. Sustainable development has since been defined in terms of the quest for a balance between economic, social, and environmental conditions and, in the form of “sustainability,” as the achievement of a state of living that can be continued long into the future without deterioration of any of these ...