Are We Planning for Sustainable Development?

Abstract

This article sets forth a set of six principles that define and operationalize the concept of sustainable development. Using these six principles, a sample of 30 comprehensive plans was evaluated to determine how well their policies support sustainable development. Findings indicate no significant differences in how extensively sustain-ability principles are supported between the plans that state an intention to integrate sustainable development and those that do not. In addition, these plans do not provide balanced support of all six sustainability principles, as they support some principles significantly more than others.