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Water challenges for cities in the Southwest are well known and still arid cities continue to follow a growth-model of development and claim “sustainable” certifications. The burden of an ineffective sustainability strategy will harm frontline communities most, yet strategies for more equitable social sustainability continue to be overlooked in favor of efficient technological solutions. This dissertation explores the socially constructed paradox of sustainable desert cities and its limitations for enhancing equitable social sustainability. This qualitative work relies on data from forty-seven interviews with city actors in cities across the US Southwest and 120 hours of participant observation in professional meetings. The sustainability benchmarking tool LEED for Cities is used as a lens for Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Tucson to observe how sustainability policymakers and professionals plan for sustainable development against the odds of ecological limits. This discussion re-engages the concept of the “urban growth machine” to explain how foremost models of sustainable development limit options to expand justice-oriented social sustainability. Instead, social sustainability is constructed through neoliberal logics that fit with the assumptions of ecological modernization. The dominant, technical definition of sustainability aligns with the metrics of financial risk assessments; however, relying only on top-down sustainable development frameworks can devalue local efforts and civic participation. Equity has gained prominence in development narratives but is limited to distribution of city services and amenities and which, while necessary, fail to extend to parity of civic participation. Additionally, equity is addressed as an outcome in sustainable city design; however, physical determinism relies on rigid assumptions about how built spaces are occupied and overstates its capacity to address social sustainability.