The scope and limits of sustainable development in Africa's built environment sector

Abstract

SUMMARY The concept of sustainable development should be familiar to those who have had to contend with development issues in the developing world. This concept first emerged in the latter part of the 1960s because of the increasing frustration felt by policy makers regarding the proliferation of failed grandiose and ambitious development programmes and abandoned ‘white elephant’ projects in Africa and other developing countries. Consequently, ‘sustainable growth’ was to form the cornerstone of development programmes. Gigantic ‘white elephant projects’ that often overshoot budgets and cease to be operational with the ending of development assistance were abandoned. However, the current broader understanding of sustainable development does have a very strong environmental theme. It is gradually becoming apparent that an unqualified growth, measured by increases in gross domestic product, which is then used as proxy for development is contradictory. Given the present situation where more than 1 billion peop...