In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities, and solar cities. They have become frames—sometimes the dominant frame—used to orient the construction of new pieces of a city in a growing number of countries. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social, and design-based terms. Ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different contexts. This article presents an original typology of ecourbanism as the integration of seven extreme type principles. We developed this typology through an abductive approach, or the back and forth testing of observed practices with arguments advanced in theories of sustainable development, planning and urban studies. While ecourban neighbourhood developments by definition express integrative goals, this typology permits assessment of the extent to which outcomes are being achieved in terms of each specific principle. We define and present a limiting case for each of these extreme type principles. Rather than attempting to render different standards equivalent across national contexts, this typology-based approach to understand the outcomes of ecourban neighbourhood developments promises a means to facilitate orienting these developments toward higher levels of integration within a common set of principled boundaries, as they are developed around the world.

Policy integration is currently cresting a wave of interest, with new legal frameworks, programs, and processes emerging. Does integrated sustainability planning, to take one key motivator of this interest in integration, offer more than environmental planning, climate change planning, or other sectoral moves? This article reviews planning research and practice in integration in the context of diverse aspirations for sustainability. Normative claims, central to environmental policy integration, are seldom distinguished in theory or tested in practice. Applying a normative framework to sustainability policy integration in current practice, we find evidence of risks to applying each and contradictions within the set.

This article presents an analysis of social sustainability in comparative theoretical context and as a challenge to the post-political interpretation of sustainability in policy practice at the urban and regional scales. Metro Vancouver provides a case study for improving our understanding of the meaning of social sustainability as a framework for social policy in that it is among the handful of cities around the world currently working to define and enact social sustainability in governance terms. Results of this participant research provide evidence that some cities are politically engaging alternative development pathways using the concept of social sustainability. For sustainable development to retain its promise as an alternative policy framework for cities, social sustainability must be at the forefront.

Vancouver has committed to host the world's first sustainable Olympic Games in 2010. This promise is in keeping with local policy trends in the Vancouver region toward visions of sustainability and with growing attention by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to environmental sustainability concerns. We demonstrate that interests in sustainability at local and international scales may differ markedly, however, resulting in a range of possible legacies for Vancouver and the international Olympic movement from the 2010 Winter Olympics. To move beyond the fruitless search for a universally acceptable definition of sustainability, we investigate different meanings of sustainability using the tool of the ‘language game’, originally devised by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Examining sustainability as a language game in the planning phase of the 2010 Olympics allows us to consider the potential and likely scenarios for sustainability wins and losses, internationally and in the local context. Four possible scenarios are considered. In the most optimistic scenario, sustainability language converges across the international and local language systems, aiding the development of sustainability in Vancouver policy, charting a course for Olympic cities to follow, and creating institutional change within the IOC as well. In the contrasting scenario, the failure to find common ground in sustainability pursuits could doom the concept both for future Olympic cities and for policy practice in Vancouver. Two other mixed outcome scenarios are considered as well. This analysis leads to insight into the boundaries of the meaning of sustainability in the context of a megaevent, in which, more than any particular demonstration project, the communicated message of sustainability may be the most lasting legacy.