ABSTRACT
Key policy agendas on shelter and participatory governance are woefully inadequate to address the multi-dimensional crisis of urban life in cities of the global South. This finding was the crux of City Futures, a book I authored regarding mainstream development opinion on the topic (Pieterse 2008). I want to build in this chapter on that work by reacting to a number of crucial mainstream policy developments that have transpired since then and extend earlier arguments about the intersections between development, planning and sustainability (Kamal-Chaoui and Robert 2009, Suzuki et al. 2010, UN-Habitat 2011, UNEP 2011a). I will not use this chapter to critique or respond to new mainstream policy discourses but rather focus on a propositional agenda that can illuminate the intersections between development, planning and sustainability. In my work I usually try to balance critique and proposition because this is the only viable, even if difficult, mode of scholarship that makes sense amid large-scale dysfunction and exclusion (Parnell, Pieterse and Watson 2009).
