Of questionable value: The role of practitioners in building sustainable cities

The reshaping of South African cities is being guided by policies aiming to build socially and environmentally just communities. Despite widespread commitment to this goal, there is little consensus on what it means and how it should and could translate into practice. The paper shows that despite the emphasis on environmental justice and building sustainable communities in policy, the institutional context for implementation (including expert driven and deliberative approaches) do not always deliver on this mandate. Consequently, policy outcomes do not reflect those of the communities and households it is meant to serve, raising challenging moral and ethical questions for institutions involved in environmental governance. This paper shows how the institutional context of environmental assessment combined with the role played by the values held by environmental practitioners charged with influencing decision-making result in the perpetuation of environmental injustices. The lack of a clearly defined profession and professional body, reflecting a diversity of values, debating, regulating, defining and defending a set of principles to guide decision-making in cities is identified as a possible reason for the lack of congruence between the values reflected in policy with those held by the communities these interventions are intended to serve. The resulting value added by sustainable cities interventions in the light of this mismatch is therefore questionable, raising challenges regarding international calls for local action as well as an increasing policy focus in South Africa on the local level as the agent of political and spatial transformation of cities.