Introduction

A decade ago, Gunder and Hillier (2009: 20) proclaimed that “sustainable development is the now dominant spatial planning narrative.” A recent survey among over 500 European planning practitioners from a large sample of countries and different professional specializations, conducted within the Organizing Sustainable Cities research project, also evinced that this claim to a large extent still seems to hold true. When asked “How central is the specific concept of ‘sustainable development’ to your professional practice at present?”, and provided with a five-grade scale from ‘Not important at all’ (1) to ‘Very important’ (5), no less than 84% of the respondents scored a 4 or 5, with 61% choosing the highest possible rating. Additionally, the great majority of the respondents also stated that the centrality of the concept to their professional practice had indeed increased in recent years.