Dear EarthTalk: The term “sustainable communities” gets bantered around quite a bit today. Could you define it for me?—Holly Parker, Mechanicsburg, Pa.

Kaid Benfield, Sustainable Communities program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), uses the term “sustainable communities” to describe places “where use of resources and emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants are going down, not up; where the air and waterways are accessible and clean; where land is used efficiently and shared parks and public spaces are plentiful and easily visited; where people of different ages, income levels and cultural backgrounds share equally in environmental, social and cultural benefits; where many needs of daily life can be met within a 20-minute walk and all may be met within a 20-minute transit ride; where industry and economic opportunity emphasize healthy, environmentally sound practices.”

In his March 2011 NRDC ‘Switchboard’ blog post entitled “A Trip to Sustainaville,” Benfield lays out his vision for what a model of sustainable communities could look like, with neighborhoods sporting healthy amounts of green space and shared vegetable gardens; mass transit, biking and walking replacing the majority of automobile traffic; and mixed use communities where schools, residences and commercial spaces are near each other and are powered by solar panels, geothermal heat pumps or windmills.

According to the Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), sustainable communities are “economically, environmentally and socially healthy and resilient” and meet “challenges through integrated solutions rather than through fragmented approaches.” And perhaps more important: Sustainable communities take a long-term perspective, focusing on “both the present and future, well beyond the next budget or election cycle” so that the needs of the current as well as future generations are met with adequate resources. ISC adds that the success of a community’s efforts to be sustainable depends on its members’ commitment and involvement as well as leadership that is inspiring, effective and responsive.

Some of the ways ISC has worked to further its goals include helping teach leaders from low income U.S. communities along the Gulf of Mexico how energy efficiency and ecological restoration can revitalize their otherwise struggling economies; developing community sustainability initiatives throughout
war-ravaged parts of Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia; installing green roofs on residences in the Chinese city of Shenzen as a pilot project to show how such “technologies” can yield significant carbon sequestration and other environmental benefits, and many more.

Key to any consideration of what makes a community sustainable is the acknowledgement that there is no such thing as perfection. “Sustainability is a process of continuous improvement so communities constantly evolve and make changes to accomplish their goals,” reports Sustainable Communities Online, a web-based information and networking clearinghouse started in the 1990s by a broad coalition of sustainability-oriented organizations and managed by the Washington, DC-based non-profit CONCERN Inc. Those looking to learn more about sustainable communities and what makes them tick should be sure to check out sustainable.org, Sustainable Communities Online’s information-packed website.

CONTACTS: NRDC Sustainable Communities, www.nrdc.org/sustainable-communities/; Institute for Sustainable Communities, www.iscvt.org; Sustainable Communities Online, www.sustainable.org.

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8 Comments

1. 1. ultimobo 10:44 AM 8/8/12

   I believe I've read that research has shown that societies collapse unless individuals go out of their way, at a cost to themselves, to ensure others do the right thing.
   
   When people devolve into don't care, not my business, everyone for themselves, the end result may be anarchy with continual internecine battles and mayhem.
   
   Whenever you stand up, take a risk, call out and discourage abusive and bad behaviour - you are directly contributing to the sustainability of that society.

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2. 2. drafter 11:13 AM 8/8/12

   shared gardens?
   This has been tried so many times and it has always failed. There has only been prosperity when people can, metaphoricly(sp?)grow their own food and sale it at a rate the market will bare. In other words capitalism and it is capitalism that has brought us the bounty we have today and brought more people out of poverty than any other system ever tried. Sustainable as described here is nothing more then centraly planned sociolism.

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3. 3. LordDraqo 12:08 PM 8/8/12

   Drafter, shared gardens can and will work. The greatest problem with them is that people who do NOT want to do the work still feel that they are entitled to the production. This is a common failing in urban industrial environments, though it is linked to what Marvin Harris has noted as a primary drive for humans; the idea of getting the most results from the lowest expenditure of energy. So people desire to have others do the work so that they may benefit.
   
   If more people are educated in the benefits of living/working together and for one-another, then we may see a change in this approach to life.

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4. 4. jtdwyer 01:51 PM 8/8/12

   It's sad to point out that many of the 7+ billion people on Earth live in patently unsustainable communities, where adequate resources are not available and the only thing being produced is more people. Since I hate to do math (required to evaluate more than one country), I'll refer only to Niger, which has the lowest life expectancy at 44 years. Niger has increased its population by more than 330%, from 3.5 million in 1967 to 15.3 million in 2009. This is just the worst example of several countries in Africa, including Chad, Nigeria, Sudan and Mali. While many of these countries have absorbed refugee populations fleeing violence in neighboring states, little is being done to correct this situation. Overall, Africa has increased its population by 55%, the Middle East by 51%, from 1990-2008. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#1960s_to_2010_table_of_population_growth

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5. 5. Mr. Peabody 03:12 PM 8/8/12

   It seems like this article is more about an anti-industrial esthetic that, while it includes valuable energy efficiency and renewable energy production doesn't really take a deep look at "sustainability" at all. To this reader, it seems more like a post-industrial nostalgia for a mythical self-sufficient pre-industrial village lifestyle. Unfortunately, there are a lot of downsides to trying to live in a self-sufficient village: trade and specialization really do raise living standards for everyone.
   
   There's probably a deeper analysis behind this, but it seems like the same solution has been sold my entire lifetime - it just has addressed different crises (litter, polution, the "energy crisis", ...) and carried different labels.
   
   As a lover of wilderness, I sympathise with the esthetic, but as an engineer, I find the knee-jerk hostility shown to some solution spaces (e.g. nuclear, GMO). If you are really worried about how the world gets through the next couple hundred years, technological and industrial approaches should be part of the trade space.

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6. 6. Mr. Peabody in reply to LordDraqo 03:21 PM 8/8/12

   WRT shared gardens: I've seen many "community gardens" that work great, where people sign up for a portion of the area, grow what they want, and do what they want with it (eat, trade, wear ...). If that's what's meant, it's not a bad urban land-use idea to have some areas zoned for "personal agriculture".
   
   I note though that one problem with this is hidden costs. This is always a risk. For this to be affordable for people, it has to be on publicly owned land, since otherwise it'd be used for something more economically productive. And though it may be less esthetically pleasing, the money thereby spent (or not produced) is real money that could be spent on something else (solar roofs, healthcare, job training, or maybe just better jobs in the area)

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7. 7. jerryd 03:47 PM 8/8/12

   
   Too much of the knee jerk has been on the nuke side.
   
   To be sustainable one must make/sell enough outside to pay for what one brings into the community plus keep the land, air, water clean, useable.
   
   So yes gardens,food, home/building made energy, using local resources, etc keeps money in the community making more jobs, wealth.
   
   And community gardens are spaces each gardener uses, not shared output/work but knowledge, tool, seed, etc sharing instead. Sadly too many knee jerks see any time people work together as communistic socialism yet our military and most any other public thing is socialistic because as humans, we are social animals, at least most of us. And why we ended up on top because we work together.

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8. 8. MutantBuzzard 07:15 PM 8/8/12

   Constitutional liberty. Not Government forcing us to do any thing, and only using punishment when absloutly nessary to maintain freedom.

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