How the City Grows: Urban Growth and Challenges to Sustainable Development in Doha, Qatar

Sustainable Development: An Appraisal from the Gulf Region, edited by Paul Sillitoe, Berghahn, 2014

24 Pages Posted: 26 Jun 2019

Date Written: January 01, 2014

Abstract

This book chapter considers how sustainable development fits in the social, political, and cultural context of contemporary Doha, Qatar. After a review of sustainable development and urban development in Qatar, this chapter makes several contentions. First, it contends that sustainable development poses a challenge to the political stability of a society that distributes state-controlled wealth to its citizenry through urban development. Second, it points to the fact that Qatar's tribal/authoritarian political regime is antithetical to some of the bottom-up democratic principles thought to underpin sustainable development. Finally, it suggest that the consignment of sustainable development efforts to the spatial discourse of urban planning in Doha and throughout the region also confounds the principles of sustainable development.

Keywords: qatar, sustainable development, urban studies

Suggested Citation

Gardner, Andrew, How the City Grows: Urban Growth and Challenges to Sustainable Development in Doha, Qatar (January 01, 2014). Sustainable Development: An Appraisal from the Gulf Region, edited by Paul Sillitoe, Berghahn, 2014, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3408462

Andrew Gardner (Contact Author)

University of Puget Sound ( email )

1500 N Warner St.
Tacoma, WA 98416
United States

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