116 Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2016 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Urban sustainability: from neoliberal governance to the right to the city Brian Elliott Philosophy Department, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon 97207-0751, USA Email: brian.elliott@pdx.edu Abstract: The sustainable development (SD) paradigm has attained a near universal level of acceptance among environmental theorists and practitioners. Part of the success of SD over the last three decades rests on its assumed political neutrality. This paper contests that neutrality and argues that in fact SD is a clear outshoot of neoliberal governance. The idea of the right to the city offers a concrete counter-model to SD as it relates specifically to the city. Finally, the most salient environmental failure of SD concerns intergovernmental efforts to tackle climate change. On this front, the widely touted mechanism of metropolitan climate action plans merely serves to undermine further the credibility of the nation state as an environmental agent. As Anthony Giddens (2011) has recently argued, it is necessary to overcome the neoliberal limits placed on state action if credible long-term responses to climate change are to emerge. Keywords: urban sustainability; urban development; social sustainability; neoliberalism; right to the city; David Harvey; Karl Marx; Henri Lefebvre; Situationist International; Hannah Arendt; Herbert Marcuse. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Elliott, B. (2016) ‘Urban sustainability: from neoliberal governance to the right to the city’, Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp.116–131. Biographical notes: Brian Elliott’s research works at the intersection of political philosophy and critical theory of art and culture. His latest book Natural Catastrophe. Climate Change in the Age of Neoliberal Governance will be published in 2016 by Edinburgh University Press. This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Natural catastrophe: climate change and neoliberal governance’ presented at the Philosophy of the City, Portland, Oregon, 22 November 2015. 1 Sustainable development and neoliberal governance The concept of sustainability has been at the centre of environmental science, policy, and more general debate for the last three decades. While arriving at a coherent definition has remained elusive, there is general agreement that sustainability ideas and practices are the best way to tackle the most pressing environmental challenges. Part of the attraction of sustainability is its apparent neutrality: no particular political or social vision is attached