by Daniel Mittler

This paper explores the very different challenges that two local authorities face in implementing sustainable development policies. Based on field research undertaken in Edinburgh and Wuppertal (Germany), it shows how the sustainability challenge in a growing (in terms of economic wealth and population numbers), post-industrial city such as Edinburgh is markedly different from that faced by a declining (again both economically and demographically) industrial city like Wuppertal. However, the paper also shows that - despite these differences - the cities� responses to the sustainability agenda are often quite similar. Both cities have, in response to the global sustainability debate, developed Local Agenda 21 programmes, for example. Even more fundamentally, both cities have felt it necessary to pursue an aggressive policy of economic growth. Both have thus configured the quest for sustainability as a quest for �sustainable growth�. This paper argues that this focus on �sustainable growth� results in contradictions and often leads to policy outcomes that undermine the very pursuit of sustainable development itself.

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