‘Enabling Transformative Urban Development for Integral Sustainability: A Case for Tapping the Potential of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy in Planning Practice and Theory’

Abstract

With Habitat III the UN decided on a New Urban Agenda to address social, economic, and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century. In spite of significant criticism, this programme of action remains largely without a profound revision of current approaches that would question and change the direction of urban development more radically. This paper approaches the inner dimensions of urban development towards sustainability from an integral perspective, for this permits an explicit consideration of spirituality in the urban context. By foregrounding cultural and human conditions of inner change within an urban(ising) context, this perspective intertwines the humanities with the complex challenges of sustainable urban development. Based on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings, it opens an entry point to inform a drastically different praxis and theorisation of urban transformation. Sri Aurobindo may be seen as a multi-disciplinary thinker on spirituality, philosophy and values change who had the unique gift to bridge the western scientific tradition with his Indian spiritual heritage. This can be related to contemporary neo-integrative and similar theories that accommodate spirituality in their understanding of global challenges. On this basis, the article further discusses in the final section contemporary urban planning theory—which has been somewhat naive and negligent in exploring the vast potential of spirituality, yet could provide a very subtle, humane and converging framework with which population could relate to. By doing so, this paper contributes to the wider debate of global urbanization and sustainable development.