The Sustainability Development Paradox_ Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe.pdfVIP

The Sustainability Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe Edited by Rob Krueger and David Gibbs. B New York: Guilford Press, 2007. O O K The concept of sustainable development has achieved remarkable success by offering R E something for everyone—ecological harmony, economic prosperity, and social equity. Groups as diverse as the World Bank and environmentalists have joined the sustainable V I development bandwagon. Nonetheless, this collection of 10 essays edited by Rob Krueger E and David Gibbs calls into question the easy embrace of sustainable development and W teases out its ironies and contradictions. Growing out of sessions at the 2004 meeting of the Association of American Geographers, the book explores the tensions between the noble aims of sustainable development and the context of contemporary capitalist social relations in which they have been implemented. Two of the book’s shared premises are that sustainability is context specific and that under the influence of the United Nation’s 113 Local Agenda 21, its implementation has been focused at the local level. Thus, the book uses diverse case studies and interrogates concepts of nature, scale, economic change, institutions, and governance. The book begins with two theoretical chapters that depl