Almost Invisible: Glimpsing the City and its Residents in the Urban Sustainability Discourse

Abstract

‘Urban sustainability’ currently receives widespread and generally enthusiastic endorsement, yet concerns are emerging that recent expressions of the concept may actually be working against the city and its residents. Based on research in Christchurch, New Zealand (one of the most urbanised countries in the world), it is argued that the assimilation of social, economic and bio-physical environmental elements that gave the idea much of its original legitimacy has been reduced to a minimalist set of material and discursive ‘eco-friendly’ denominators. As a result, only occasional glimpses of the city and its human inhabitants are caught in attempts to operationalise sustainability in urban areas. The effect is that cities, in New Zealand at least, are less liveable and less likeable than they should be. It is suggested that there is a real need to re-urbanise and rehumanise the urban sustainability agenda as a means of realising its integrative and transformative potential.