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Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept
Abstract
Here Michael Jacobs notes that sustainable development has come to mean all things to all people but argues this does not mean it has no theoretical or policy relevance. It is a ‘contested’ rather than an empty concept, and Jacobs identifies four ‘faultlines’ that produce two distinct conceptions of sustainable development which he calls ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’. The faultlines are: limits to growth, environmental protection, equity, and participation. Jacobs argues in favour of the radical conception.
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Citations
Cited by
The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability
Dempsey, N., Bramley, G., Power, S., & Brown, C. (2011) · Sustainable Development · doi:10.1002/sd.417 · Cited by 1,920
Smart sustainable cities of the future: An extensive interdisciplinary literature review
Bibri, S. E., & Krogstie, J. (2017) · Sustainable Cities and Society · doi:10.1016/j.scs.2017.02.016 · Cited by 1,599
Pohl, C., Rist, S., Zimmermann, A., Fry, P., Gurung, G. S., Schneider, F., Speranza, C. I., Kiteme, B., Boillat, S., Serrano, E., et al. (2010) · Science and Public Policy · doi:10.3152/030234210x496628 · Cited by 555
Bibri, S. E. (2018) · Sustainable Cities and Society · doi:10.1016/j.scs.2017.12.032 · Cited by 273
Public identification with sustainable development
Macnaghten, P., & Jacobs, M. (1997) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/s0959-3780(96)00023-4 · Cited by 244
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Jacobs, M.
- Venue
- Fairness and Futurity
- Publisher
- Oxford University PressOxford
- Published
- 1999-04-01
- Pages
- 21-45
- OpenAlex
- W161507623
- Cited by
- 413
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 30.70
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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How to cite
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/0198294891.003.0002
- The paper
- Jacobs, M. (1999). Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept. Fairness and Futurity. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198294891.003.0002
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
