ABSTRACT
The concepts of sustainable development that have emerged in the ‘post-Brundtland’ era are explored in terms of laying the foundations for a vision of sustainable urban development (SUD) and a methodology for its implementation. The integrated vision of SUD described here results from the activities of an international network called BEQUEST. Through a project funded by the European Commission (EC), the members of the network have built consensus across a wide range of stakeholders-planners, property developers, designers and contractors-involved in the creation, operation and use of the built environment. The result is a collaborative, urban re/development process, or methodology, in which the built environment is gradually adapted over space and time to suit more sustainable lifestyles. This consensus-building has in turn led to the development of a framework for analysing the stakeholder interests and activities underlying this collaboration and for evaluating the ecological integrity, equity, participation and futurity of urban development. This in turn provides the opportunity to integrate such values within the environmental, economic and social issues of SUD at various spatial levels and temporal scales of the urban development process and use them to assess the sustainability of cities.
