ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the key question: can cities be sustainable? To answer this we need to understand what ‘sustainability’ means in an urban context. Sustainability is not merely a physical concept, concerned with the relations between cities and the natural environment. In its broadest sense it is also a social concept, concerned with the processes and patterns of development and their unequal spatial consequences. Thus we are concerned with cities as not just sources of global environmental degradation, but as sites of environmental and social injustice.
