Making Sense of Sustainable Development: Politicians, Professionals, and Policies in Local Planning

Abstract

The authors investigate the ways in which sustainable development is interpreted within the development plan process, focusing on the roles of local politicians and planners. The rapidly developing ‘policy space’ surrounding the idea of sustainable development provides opportunities for engagement between planners, politicians, and other local actors. This policy space and its relationship to the plan-making process is outlined, along with key political aspects, before the results from an investigation into two case-study unitary development plans are presented. These illustrate how the influences of planners and politicians, along with key characteristics of the planning system, were instrumental in shaping both the content and the form of sustainable development policies and had implications for the way in which local sustainable development was interpreted.