Despite the growing competitiveness in the international political economy for new and more tightly integrated global markets and the rise of new and ascendant economic powers in the Orient, the need for sustainable development on a worldwide scale remains a pressing one on the international agenda. In thinking schematically about the trends and tendencies influencing the institutionalization of sustainable development, an image of where we are and where we want to go may be represented by a series of parallel forces moving us toward imbalance or collapse intersected by a series of parallel forces moving in the opposite direction toward balance or sustainability. One model of desired change suggests that if we can only build up the arguments, tools, and resources for the sustainable direction, then the balance will shift at some point and we will then be effectively on a sustainable path. Another model of desired change, the sustainable city alternative, has historically been the road less traveled.

These sustainable tendencies, we argue, can at best provide certain necessary conditions for generating long-term sustainability – strategically, they cannot constitute the path itself. Sustainable development alone does not lead to sustainability. Indeed, it may in fact support the longevity of the unsustainable path. These many tendencies require synthesis and transformation into a new system of production and reproduction that can best come from an anchor and a catalyst – i.e., the design and institution of sustainable cities. In our view, sustainable cities act as necessary nodal points for the transformation of quantitative change into qualitative change.