Planning for sustainable development: a paradigm shift towards a process-based approach

Ali Bagheri and Peder Hjorth
Additional contact information
Ali Bagheri: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Sweden, Postal: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Sweden
Peder Hjorth: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Sweden, Postal: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Sweden

Sustainable Development, 2007, vol. 15, issue 2, 83-96

Abstract: Prevailing approaches of planning and strategy making, which traditionally deal with the states of systems in terms of fixed goals, fail to acknowledge the process nature of sustainable development. Using a system dynamics approach and relying on the concept of viability loops, the paper aims to illustrate a practical implementation of sustainable development with an urban water system as an example. It argues that planning for sustainable development should be 'process-based' - rather than 'fixed-goal' - oriented. Unlike the traditional approaches of strategy making to set fixed goals related to either supply-side and|or demand-side management, it is argued that triggering a social learning process with full involvement of all stakeholders and planners in the process would be the most suitable strategy for sustainable development. To this end, backcasting is recommended as a suitable tool and the process of model building is regarded as a means of learning rather than forecasting. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/sd.310 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:15:y:2007:i:2:p:83-96

DOI: 10.1002/sd.310

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().