Part 3 puts social sustainability at the forefront and elaborates how local governments frequently use this concept to justify regeneration and the demolition of housing. Agendas of good governance, localism and migration policies, as well as recent social benefits cuts, are critically examined to analyse the patterns and structures that influence the dissonance between different actors (mainly communities, different levels of government, and private companies), and their ability to shape the sustainable development and urban planning discourses. Part 2 asks how London can be sustained, especially considering the increasing influence of partnerships between private companies and government bodies that are established in London’s 32 boroughs. Part 1 focuses on London’s sustainability challenges, as illustrated with “Just Space”, which brings together the needs of London’s communities with academic and professional experience to work on issues related to housing and regeneration. However, they also examine actors and actions that aim to (re)claim local capacities and with the “right to the city”. The book highlights the (social) injustices that market expansion and the privatization of spatial development produce. They elaborate on the challenges that come when a discourse is used as a political rhetoric to serve the “economic growth first” agenda. In particular, the chapters engage with the socio-spatial dimensions of the discourses in different policy fields, such as housing and property development, education and migration.

However, the level of detail of the authors’ analyses, which in many chapters is based on extensive interviews and long-term engagement with particular case studies, adds depth to the sustainable development discourses in and about the city. This is particularly so in the context of a large, diverse and rapidly changing city such as London.

That sustainability is an ambiguous and highly debated concept, which is translated into tension-laden sustainable development policies, will not come as a surprise to readers. This book places a big question mark against the sustainability of sustainable development policies and their role and contribution to sustaining the places, environments and people in London.

London global city case study