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Sustainable Development is an important policy objective at global, European, national and local levels. While it has been extensively analysed from the national level upwards, from both theoretical and political perspectives, there remains an urgent need to engage in research on the regional and local applications of that concept. There is a concomitant need to develop and compare strategies and options regarding feasible policy measures, but also to strive for greater transparency regarding problems and conflicts that arise in pursuit of this goal. At the practice level, one has to develop operational indicators and measures of progress. Performance along the road to sustainable development must be amendable to quantitative as well as qualitative assessment. There is an emerging and widespread consensus that economic development, if it is to be complete, must be sustainable and it must be pursued in a spirit of shared responsibility by the various societal players. In this context it is important to clarify and debate disparate views of sustainable development, how to manage the process of transition to sustainability and how to enhance our policy measures with this objective in mind. These are the aspirations underlying the contributions reported in the present volume.
