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Urban Planning — “It’s All About Sustainability”: Urban Planners’ Conceptualizations of Sustainable Development in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Received: 22 February 2020 Accepted: 16 May 2020 Sustainable development forms the core of urban planning in contemporary times. Urban planning has been recognised as being central to sustainability because well planned urban centres can be engines of economic prosperity, social well-being and environmental sustainability. Port Harcourt, a major Nigerian city faces many environmental challenges like flooding that impacts achieving sustainable development and which has been linked to urban planning. Urban planners carry out spatial planning but there is a paucity of research that engages with these professionals to gauge their understanding of sustainability. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It draws on qualitative interview data from five urban planners in Port Harcourt city, Nigeria, to explore their understandings of the concept of sustainable development and how they implement this understanding in their day-to-day work. This research reports the urban planners have a solid understanding of sustainability and the role of planning in its achievement. Their understanding centres around longevity and building long lasting human settlements in consideration of future planning decisions. This aligns with current global thinking whereby planning is key to achieving sustainable development. This finding suggests the environmental problems experienced in Port Harcourt are likely due to weak infrastructural base and a failure to implement/enforce planning regulations that aim to promote sustainable development.