Planning for Sustainability: A View from the Global South

Abstract

The ideal of sustainable development has become increasingly prominent in global development discourse over the last half-century and is now firmly being embedded within global agreements such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda. This prominence is also reflected in the recent UN-Habitat World Cities Re port 2020 aptly titled ‘The value of sustainable urbanization’ and reaffirmed that sustainable urbanization remains central to the goal of overall sustainable development by creating social, economic, and environmental value in pursuance of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals. However, despite considerable progress in many dimensions, continued and rapid urbanization poses a particular challenge for urban planning in pursuit of sustainable development, especially in urban contexts in the Global South. The series of articles in this edition reflect on some of the challenges in planning for sustainability and provide some case studies of how cities in the South have responded to these challenges.