Project R-5041

Sustainability through situation: cheap tricks, contingent hybrids and radical change (Research)

Sustainability has become a ubiquitous term in many academic disciplines. However, for many in our society sustainability is still unknown and unloved. This attitude is sustained by the fact that sustainability is a dynamic and unfolding phenomenon, and that given the global scale and complexity of the sustainability challenge we will most likely never have a complete understanding thereof. In order to address this problem, we require approaches which are comprehensive and context-specific. Moreover, given the perpetually increasing urbanisation of humanity, we need to develop these approaches without delay in order to manage and expedite the transition towards a more sustainable urban form. The main objective of the study is to investigate how this transition can be managed and expedited. Given the unsustainable nature of suburban development, as well as its rapid expansion and impact on the rest of the urban system, the study will be located within a suburban context. The study will work on three tracks: analysing the sustainability discourse at the regime level (policy and planning context), developing a taxonomy of suburban development within metropolitan Cape Town (historical and socio-economical context), and exploring sustainability in the specific study context by developing an analytical framework to direct an iterative process of identifying and evaluating a series of sustainability-related projects.

01 January 2014 - 31 December 2017