The banks of Frankfurt and the sustainable city

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to understand better the political content of the now ubiquitous term, sustainable development. Perhaps the most elegant definition of sustainable development yet devised is that by planner Scott Campbell. His definition is illustrated by a simple equilateral triangle in which the competing demands of the three Es – environmental protection, economic development, and social equity – occupy the triangle’s corners. The three Es have been conceptually related by a public discourse associated with the environmental movement over the past thirty years. What is novel about Campbell’s contribution to this discourse is the triangulated structure of the three variables and his proposal that correspondingly, a series of three rational conflicts occupy the triangle’s sides. Campbell’s point is that sustainable development lies at the geometric centre of the triangle and can be achieved only by negotiating and thus balancing the dynamic conflicts that naturally exist between the networks of interest nested in each corner.1 Although Campbell’s definition is extremely helpful, we will argue that it does not go quite far enough. Implicit in Campbell’s logic is the idea that sustainable development is a discursive mode of conflict resolution. Such an activity, we argue, is inherently democratic because it assumes that citizens in conflict will rationally resolve their disputes in public space. To develop further this hypothesis we rely on the description of Strong Democracy developed by the political philosopher, Benjamin Barber.2 Barber argues that the history of Western liberal democracy is constituted of three dispositions – anarchism, realism, and minimalism. In this political taxonomy, each liberal disposition distinguishes itself by opting for alternative modes of conflict resolution: anarchists tend to deny the existence of conflict, realists tend to suppress it, and minimalists tend to tolerate it. This distinction will be further developed below.