The universal design concept is directly related to the goal of "responding the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to address their own needs." (United Nations World Committee on Environment and Development, 1987)
Therefore, the notion of sustainable development implies the complete hault of wasting public investments for communication systems, transportation systems, and use of buit environments. Besides, the universal design approach means that different generations of users can enjoy benefit from common resources available in urban environments. Thus, as features of environmental accessibility expand and grow, we could spend less social resources making adaptation work in new structures that are built with many barriers at fast pace.
The sustainable development concept let us consider achieving a harmonic relationship between people and available resources in built environment that we inherited from past generations, from current generations, and from future generations. As universal design applications flourish everywhere, this harmonic relations can become easily recognized in people's autonomy through users' conscious decisions, by promotion of equal opportunities for social participation, by development of technology that is necessary for compensation of disabilities and by successful experiences of uncommon people that can be shared as role models for everyone.