How possible is sustainable urban development? an analysis of planners' perceptions about new urbanism, smart growth and the ecological city

New urbanism, smart growth and the ecological city have been proposed by advocates and others as being the essential equivalent of sustainable development as that term has been broadly defined. This paper focuses on how planners in the USA collectively define these three development approaches in terms of 14 principles of sustainable development. Based on a national survey of practicing planners in the USA, we find that planners everywhere have relatively high, but quite different, expectations regarding what can and should be accomplished under each of the three development approaches. Smart growth is matched most frequently with the sustainable development principles and is also the most understood. The ecological city, while least understood, becomes more frequently matched with the principles as familiarity increases. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for our quest to achieve a more sustainable development pattern.