THE POWER OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

摘要

This essay addresses the usage of 'sustainable development' in the planning profession as a 'master-sign ifier' - a speech/ textual act or linguistic device that planners unwittingly use to stitch together arbitrary sets of problems into a patchwork quilt. The added effect of this is to establish or maintain control over the public discourse of spatial change. As a master-signifier, sustainable development becomesa structuring agent, an organizing discourse, or an ordering device upon which meaning can be ascribed and understood in specific contexts. The content is arbitrary. As a master-signifier, sustainable development, can be seen as something other than a sustainability process, an end-point or development goal, or a guiding principle like justice or liberty. It is also more than just a policy in motion or a fuzzy concept, where barriers merely need to be broken down or concepts simply clarified (see Carr et al., 2015). As a master-signifier, sustainable development helps us to understandthat anyone with the resources can be sustainable; one can exert power over discourse, and, then, enact their agenda in space.