ABSTRACT
The term “sustainable development” appears to have been used for the first time in the 1972 book Limits to Growth, in a passage excerpted later in this section, and has been applied widely to urban planning and architecture only since the early 1990s. However, concerns about the unsustainability of modern urban development patterns have a much longer history. To put our future efforts into perspective, it is important to be aware of this history and of the various themes that have shaped debates about sustainability.
