Sustainability or Sustainable Infrastructure? Using sustainability discourse to construct a motorway

02 November 2020

WestConnex is a 33km, A$16.8bn motorway under construction in Sydney. It is promoted by the state government as an example of excellent ‘sustainable infrastructure’. We explore the use of sustainability discourse to explain how a motorway corporation, established by a state government committed to building infrastructure that could later be privatized, engaged with an organization that redefined the notion of sustainability and then presented this definition and approach to justify their motorway construction practices as sustainable.