This section focuses attention on the meanings of and the reality of attempts to achieve sustainable urban development. It is divided into three subsections. The first provides a brief history concerning the way in which the term and its conventional interpretation have entered development discourse. The second looks at various interpretations of the concept, showing that people and agencies using the term often mean very different things and that major misunderstandings can easily arise. The last subsection looks into the methods that are being applied in urban areas to address the problematic of sustainable development and the main problems that these methods are encountering.