SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES FFROMROM V VISIONISION TOTO … · wings of self-reliance and curiosity to...

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

LAMONT C. HEMPEL

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

FROM VISION TO ACTIONFROM VISION TO ACTION

LAMONT C. HEMPEL

This booklet is about the role of healthycommunities in restoring social andecological balance in our individuallives and in our collective search forenduring forms of justice, prosperity,security, and environmental quality.It is about a vision of sustainabilityand its application to community.

Funding is provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The opinions expressed are those of theauthor. This booklet may be reproduced for educational purposes if the author of the work is given credit. Noportion may be reproduced for profit.

©1998 Claremont Graduate University

Written and designed by Lamont C. Hempel, Ph.D.

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Marilyn Hempel, Kara Serrano, Jason Venetoulis, Marilee Scaff, Julian Scaff,June Gin, and Sunday Obazuaye. Copies of this publication can be obtained from the School of Politics and Economics, ClaremontGraduate University, Claremont, CA 91711-6163. Readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of the companion volume, SustainableCommunities: Guide for Grassroots Activists, edited by Marilyn Hempel, Executive Director, Population Coalition, 1476 NorthIndian Hill Blvd., Claremont, CA 91711.

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,Rains from the sky a meteoric showerRains from the sky a meteoric showerRains from the sky a meteoric showerRains from the sky a meteoric showerRains from the sky a meteoric showerOf facts...they lie unquestioned,Of facts...they lie unquestioned,Of facts...they lie unquestioned,Of facts...they lie unquestioned,Of facts...they lie unquestioned, uncombined. uncombined. uncombined. uncombined. uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our illWisdom enough to leech us of our illWisdom enough to leech us of our illWisdom enough to leech us of our illWisdom enough to leech us of our illIs daily spun; but there exists no loomIs daily spun; but there exists no loomIs daily spun; but there exists no loomIs daily spun; but there exists no loomIs daily spun; but there exists no loomTo weave it into fabric...To weave it into fabric...To weave it into fabric...To weave it into fabric...To weave it into fabric...

–Edna St. Vincent Millay–Edna St. Vincent Millay–Edna St. Vincent Millay–Edna St. Vincent Millay–Edna St. Vincent Millay

ç Printed by Claremont Print & Copy Center Recycled paper (20% post-consumer waste)

Unsustainable

Almost Unsustainable

AlmostSustainable

Sus-tainable

CONTENTSSustainable Community Concepts and Definitions

DefinitionsLimitations

Roots & Wings: Creating a Vision for the 21st CenturyRevisioningCommunity Bequests

The Sustainability TriangleThe Sustainability Barometer

Building BlocksCommunityGlocal PerspectivesDeliberative DemocracyCarrying CapacitySocial and Environmental JusticeRegenerative Design

The Four Greatest Challenges to SustainabilityThe Consumption ChallengeThe Population ChallengeThe Equity ChallengeThe Governance Challenge

Campaign Finance ReformTax ShiftRegionalismIndicator Development and Reporting

Ten Key Ingredients for Building Sustainable Communities

Sustainability IndicatorsCommunity Profile InformationEconomic IndicatorsEnvironmental IndicatorsSocio-Cultural IndicatorsMixed IndicatorsCommunity-Based Survey IndicatorsModel Indicator Projects

Ecological Footprint AnalysisCarbon Footprint Worksheet

Sustainable Communities: From Vision to Action • Page 1

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2020202020

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Sustainable Communities achieve and retain improvementsin quality of life without diminishing the quality of lifeenjoyed by other communities, now and in the future. Thecitizens of these communities pursue economic prosperity,social equity, ecological health, and civic engagement for thepurpose of securing and enriching both natural landscapesand human mindscapes.

Sustainable Communities have levels of pollution, con-sumption, and population size that are in keeping withregional carrying capacity; their members share an ethic ofresponsibility to each other and to future generations; theprices of their goods and services reflect, where practical, thefull social and environmental costs of their provision anddisposal; equity mitigation measures protect their poorestmembers from the impacts of full-cost pricing; their systemsof governance, education and civic leadership encourageinformed democratic deliberation; and their design of mar-kets, transport, land use, and architecture enhances neighbor-hood livability and preserves ecological integrity.

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY

Sustain: to supportwithout collapse; to keepgoing; to endure withoutfailing; to maintain integ-rity; to uphold the processof life and death; to pre-

serve meaningful choices.

Sustainability is thegoal of securing life, lib-erty, and social well-beingwithin the means of na-ture. It is about opportu-nity and the preservationof meaningful choice—preserving for future gen-erations as many or moreopportunities as we have.

Sustainable communitiesare, in the words of thePresident’s Council onSustainable Development:“healthy communitieswhere natural and historicresources are preserved,jobs are available, sprawlis contained, neighbor-hoods are secure, educa-tion is lifelong, transporta-tion and health care areaccessible, and all citizenshave opportunities to im-prove the quality of theirlives.”

—Alfred North Whitehead

donedonedonedonedone

“Ideas“Ideas“Ideas“Ideas“Ideaswon’t keep.won’t keep.won’t keep.won’t keep.won’t keep.SomethingSomethingSomethingSomethingSomething

mustmustmustmustmustbe be be be be donedonedonedonedone

about them.”about them.”about them.”about them.”about them.”

Sustainable Communities:From Vision toAction •Page 2

ÞßàÞßàÞßàÞßàÞßà

Limitations of the Concept. No matter what object ofsustainability is measured, there is a range of time across whichsustainability is not achievable. Communities that may be sus-tainable over the time frames of modern history—i.e., centuries—become faint punctuation marks in the eons of geological history.Even a sustainable Earth eventually succumbs to entropy, asteroidcollisions, or other astronomical cataclysms. Nothing is perma-nent in a physical sense, including our solar system. Accordingly,human communities cannot be sustainable in any strict sense ofthe term.

Practically speaking, of course, the concept of a sustainablecommunity fits well within the time-scale of human endeavors.But questions remain about the concept of sustainability, itself.Like the idea of progress, sustainability begs the questions: Ofwhat? For whom? For how long? To what end? Sustainability,after all, may imply the continuation of institutions and commu-nities that are unjust or incompatible with other important values.No decent person wants to sustain the practice of slavery. More-over, if the essence of sustainability is merely endurance, theconcept becomes intellectually bankrupt and ethically insupport-able. “No moral argument can justify the continued existence ofexisting” (Treanor 1996).

Even ecological sustainability is problematic. For example, sus-taining a healthy lake as a stable aquatic ecosystem meansreversing the natural process of eutrophication that slowly turnslakes into marshes, and marshes into forests. Clearly, it is thebiosphere’s ecological integrity that must be sustained, not neces-sarily a particular ecosystem or a specific evolutionary stage.

Part of what makes an individual life precious is the knowledgethat it is unsustainable. The same is true, ultimately, of thebiosphere and its collective forms of life. Science and philosophyboth teach that neither living species nor the earth itself arepermanent fixtures. From rainbows to breathtaking sunsets, whatgives poignancy to beauty is the knowledge that it seldom lasts.What must be sustained is the biogeochemical system that gener-ates such beauty and the human spirit that treasures it. Hence, theobject of sustainability is not preservation or endurance so muchas it is wholeness.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

“ We shall not cease fromexploration. And the endof all our exploring will beto arrive where we startedand know the place for thefirst time.”

—T. S. Eliot


A wise parent once advised fellow parents that the most important giftthey could provide for their children was a sense of roots and wings:family and community roots to sustain them in times of adversity;wings of self-reliance and curiosity to enlarge their individual capaci-ties for discovery and achievement. The challenge was to find theappropriate balance between the two, recognizing that as wings spread,roots may wither.

Globally speaking, the wings of technology and capital mobility havelargely replaced the roots of community and cultural tradition. Eventhe roots of family have become more tenuous. The resulting imbal-ances between the forces of change and the empires of continuity havemade the world more unstable and, at the same time, more open to newways of thinking.

We need a society that tends its social and biological roots with just asmuch care as it lavishes on its technological wings. But what visionwould guide such a society? And how would it be introduced inpractical terms?

REVISIONINGConceptions of the future—whether a simple Arcadian age, GeorgeOrwell’s 1984, or some Internet-based Utopia—are shaped in largemeasure by how well we understand the political and economic lessonsof the past, by how the technoscientific culture of the present influencesour sense of what is possible and desirable, and by our need for a visionor unifying public philosophy, often born from crisis, that is capable ofstimulating the human imagination and, perhaps, the will to act.

We have before us the conditions for creating fundamental change inresponse to problems and crises confronting our communities and ourenvironment. Problems such as poverty, crime, pollution, and urbansprawl will not yield to science, free markets, or good government,alone. There must be some conception of a better life that makes thecost of changing worthwhile.

If serious revisioning is to be undertaken, it will almost certainly haveto start with a rekindling of community-based public spirit—what JaneMansbridge (1994) terms “the political form of altruism.” Given thatthere is no guiding public philosophy that commands consensus acrossmuch of the world today, there is a pressing need for new leaders andinstitutions that can inspire the trust and sense of civic communityrequired for public spirit to develop. Because so many political systemshave been designed around adversarial approaches and institutions,

ROOTS & WINGS: CREATING A VISION

“Vision without action isuseless. But action with-out vision does not knowwhere to go or why to gothere. Vision is absolutelynecessary to guide andmotivate action. Morethan that, vision, whenwidely shared and firmlykept in sight, brings intobeing new systems.”

— Meadows, Meadowsand Randers, 1992


“ Dreams are maps.The visions we offerour children shape thefuture. It matters whatthose visions are. Of-ten they become self-fulfilling prophesies. ”

— Carl Sagan

the development of “cooperationist” institutions has suffered badly,especially in the U.S. (Kelman, 1992).

In order to combat the mulish cynicism that impedes needed reformsin our public policies and institutions, we need a more lucid andfocused vision—an orienting vision that sees ecological and commu-nity restoration as inseparable goals. Like the concepts of democracyand religious faith, it must be a vision of hope that engages ourimagination and ideals, while defying narrow definition. At the sametime, it must be sufficiently comprehensible and practical to mobilizegrassroots action. Above all, it must be a vision in which the quality ofindividual human lives, the quality of the biosphere, and the quality oflife in community are inextricably linked.

For a growing number of people, this vision is expressed in the conceptof sustainable communities. Far from a bright new panacea or a clear-cut blueprint for happiness, it is more like an old torn and tatteredtreasure map, discovered in bits and pieces amidst the rubble of a once-proud castle. Indeed, the concept has been around for a long time,though the term is relatively new.

Like democracy and other transformative ideas, the vision of sustain-able communities promises to remake the world through reflection andchoice, but its potential to engage people’s hopes, imagination, andsense of responsibility may depend more on what it symbolizes than onany particular meaning or interpretation. As any member of a faith-based community knows, conceptual precision and clarity are notessential for guiding human action. More important than agreement ona specific definition is understanding the broad idea and its implica-tions. The power of the concept is already recognized by many leadersand key institutions. As one writer put it, “In the battle of big publicideas, sustainability has won: the task of the coming years is simply towork out the details, and to narrow the gap between its theory andpractice” (Campbell, 1996).

THE BEQUEST OF COMMUNITYSustainability is ultimately about values and forms of human organi-zation that cohere ecologically and socially. It does not require persis-tence of the status quo for its validation; only a continuation of life-enhancing processes that promote harmony and a deep sense of place.By providing the milieu for this sense of place to develop, sustainablecommunities offer their members a collective means of hope andrenewal. Like grandchildren, these communities provide a preciousglimpse of social immortality that can soothe the pain of aging. Effortsto build sustainable communities can be thought of as a bequest to

FOR THE TWENTY -FIRST CENTURY


future generations, but exactly what should be bequeathed remainsunclear. It is impossible to know precisely the needs of people 500years—or perhaps even 5 days—into the future. The social andeconomic opportunities we bequeath will depend on the future rate oftechnoscientific advance, the future capacity to manage and govern,and the human spirit and foresight capacity that each generation instillsin the next.

Perhaps the only thing that we can know for sure to include in ourbequest is the provision of a healthy ecological life-support system.But many signs today suggest that this may be the hardest of allinheritances to secure. The troublesome combination of high fertility,political cynicism, and cultivated consumerism pervading many hu-man societies today threatens to leave us with a world devoid of suchtreasures as ancient forests, pure water, clean air, and inspiringlandscapes. While it is clear that many people will not rue the loss ofsuch natural amenities, a disturbing question remains: Can humanityafford—economically, psychologically, and ethically—to reconstructthe world in ways that systematically destroy the natural heritage onwhich so much of human well-being, even survival, depends? Presum-ably, it is not biological survival of the human species that is in dangerso much as it is the moral or spiritual survival of what it means to behuman and to be part of a complex living community. We cannot countthe ways in which human identity, imagination, and esthetic apprecia-tion depend on the richly textured landscape of nonhuman nature.What but unbridled hubris could let us think that what we considerdesirable in human nature will survive if we despoil all of nonhumannature?

Unfortunately for hard-pressed defenders of rainforests, wildlife, openspace and clean water, saving the environment may not be possiblewithout first saving the functional integrity of human communities —what political philosophers refer to as the polis. We are unlikely tosucceed in restoring the natural environment if we lack the knowledgeand political will to restore human communities. The wings of humandevelopment are only as strong as its roots. We cannot have sustainabledevelopment without sustainable communities. And we cannot buildsustainable communities without redirecting our attention to the linkedproblems of civic and environmental decline, and their origins in costlyefforts to accommodate overconsumption and overpopulation.

Land of Opportunity“Try to imagine. America hasabout 4.6% of the world’s popu-lation. Our country uses 39%of all the world’s newsprint,27% of all its aluminum, 35%of all the world’s computers,33% of all its plastic, 24% ofthe world’s copper, 25% of allthe world’s energy, 22% of theworld’s beef, and 13% of itssteel. America has 1/4 of all theworld’s roads servicing 1/3 ofall the world’s automobiles.Impressive, huh?”

— Paul Robbins, 1997

Building communities inwhich environmentalquality, social justice,and economic vitalitycohere in a sustainedfashion requires a rarecombination of long-range foresight andshort-term adaptability.


“We don’t think our way into a new life;we live our way into a new kind of thinking.” – Richard Rohr

Quality of Individual Human Life

Quality of Community

Quality of Biosphere

Sustainability Triangle

health, freedom, dignity, access to resources,mobility, fulfillment of individual potential

sense of place, participation ingovernance, social equity, ethic ofresponsibility, voluntary associationsand community service

biological diversity, carrying capacity, planetary lifesupport, renewable resource base, aesthetic/spiritualengagement

“ In the past ten ortwenty or thirty yearsour impact has grownso much that we’rechanging even thoseplaces we don’t inhabit—changing the way theweather works, chang-ing the plants and ani-mals that live at thepoles or deep in thejungle.

...Though the U.S.population increases byonly about three mil-lion people a year,through births and im-migration together,each of those threemillion new Americanswill consume on aver-age forty or fifty timesas much as a personborn in the ThirdWorld.”

— Bill McKibben, 1998

Sustainability can also be conceptualized as the integration oftwo dimensions of well-being: the human sphere and the eco-sphere. An excellent example of this approach is RobertPrescott-Allen’s BAROMETER OF SUSTAINABILITY:

For an Internet Guide to theBarometer of Sustainability,visit http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssp/barom.htm

(International Union for theConservation of Nature)

Unsustainable

Almost Unsustainable

AlmostSustainable

Sus-tainable

Intermediate

100—

Good

80—

OK

60—

Medium

40—

Poor

20—

Bad

—Bad| |

20Poor |

40Medium |

60OK |

80Good |

1000

EcoSystem Wellbeing

Human

Wellbeing


BUILDING BLOCKS

Building sustainable communities requires careful integration ofenvironmental, social, and economic improvement strategies. Thesestrategies create a sense of place, personal responsibility, and socialwell-being that together foster lasting improvements in quality of life.At least six critical building blocks are needed in order to attain suchquality-of-life—beginning with a concept of community, itself.

Building Blocks:(Means of Achieving

Sustainability)

Sense of Community

“Glocal” Thinking

Deliberative (SmallGroup) Democracy

Carrying Capacity

Social & Environ-mental Justice

Regenerative Design(Efficiency +

“Sufficiency”)

COMMUNITY

Communities are interacting populations whose limited size andcollective sense of shared responsibility and continuity facilitate theachievement of common goals and lasting relationships. While thereis no assurance that these goals and relationships will be sustainable,overall quality of life is likely to rise when people take pride incommunity. To be sure, the definition of community used here doesnot extend to today’s megacities, with their tens-of-millions of tran-sient and crowded inhabitants. However, it may apply to certainneighborhoods and groupings of neighborhoods found within suchmegalopili. Human scale is very important in this regard. Real, place-based communities provide the only organized level of politicalinteraction in which face-to-face deliberation can flourish. Further-more, they offer the only form of biological interaction in whichecological literacy — the local knowledge needed for understanding,protecting, and preserving quality of life within a human landscape —can develop and take hold.

The value of close-knit communities in the midst of globalizingmarkets and giant technological networks is principally that individu-als can discover a sense of connection with place in what is otherwisean overwhelmingly transient, complex and fragmented world. The re-


Goals of Community Sustainability

Ecological IntegrityEcological IntegrityEcological IntegrityEcological IntegrityEcological Integrity

Social Well-Being Social Well-Being Social Well-Being Social Well-Being Social Well-Being

Economic VitalityEconomic VitalityEconomic VitalityEconomic VitalityEconomic Vitality

We are a nation ofmore than 35,000townships andmunic ipal i t ieslinked by ad-

vanced transportand communication

facilities. Eighty percent ofthe population reside inone of 320 officially de-fined metropolitan areas— cities of 50,000 or more.

These urban areas repre-sent a fundamental shiftin US settlement patternsfrom those of a centuryago, when a full three-quarters of the populationlived in rural areas orcommunities of less than50,000 people.

Within the next 20-25years, the world is likely tohave 500 cities with popu-lations exceeding 1 mil-lion and at least 30 citieswith populations in excessof 8 million. Progresstoward sustainability insuch settings will dependlargely on what happensat the neighborhood andsuburban level—and onimprovements in regionalcapacity for coordinatingtheir activities.

establishment of civic community is one of the most fundamentalprerequisites for developing a sustainable society. For billionsof uprooted human beings, there appears to be a diminishingsense of political engagement and social belonging outside ofthe increasingly fragile structure of family life. This is whatmakes the rediscovery of community ideals socially therapeu-tic, as well as politically liberating. Ecologically, there is aparallel loss of connection being experienced in much of the worldthat undermines many traditional values of land stewardship, commu-nal pride of place, and a sense of interconnectedness with nature. It isimportant to note that while communal organization is still strong inmany places, especially in the village cultures of the Third World, it isunder assault from the growing forces of geographic mobility, radicalindividualism, and cultural assimilation or homogenization.

One cannot emphasize the promise of community without noting thepolitical and environmental risks that it entails. Without global, na-tional, state, and regional coordination, community empowermentmay simply lead to greater political fragmentation. It may promotedangerous forms of parochialism and isolationism. In fact, some formsof community life can stunt human development almost as much as theravages of disease and war. Many small, homogenous communitieshave been a source of debilitating conformity in times past. Oftendominated by a single family or economic interest, some of thesecommunities or “company towns” have allowed their citizens andnatural environments to be exploited with a ruthlessness that exceeds,in per capita terms, some of the worst transgressions and costlyregulatory omissions of state and national governments.

It is only by re-establishing the primacy of community in political lifethat the social and environmental sensibilities needed to manage theglobal reach of technology and capital are likely to emerge. The easewith which billions of people can now communicate and trade with oneanother makes the comprehensible scale and sense of place afforded bylocal communities indispensable for balancing the freedom of global

interaction with the responsibility of civic engagement.

Communities represent the social and physical expression of interde-pendence. While they can be organized for both good and ill ends, theirfundamental purpose is to connect individuals with each other, andcollectively with the bioregion that nurtures them and the life aroundthem. When designed to promote cooperation for mutual benefit,communities provide what Robert Putnam (1993) calls “virtuouscircles” or self-reinforcing stocks of social capital: “cooperation, trust,reciprocity, civic engagement, and collective well-being.” By harness-ing collective will and effort, communities do for people what ecosys-tems do for the rest of nature—provide a measure of stability, resil-ience, and positive synergy in the otherwise lonely and chaotic lives ofindividuals.


GLOCAL PERSPECTIVE

The world is becoming indivisible as an economy and, in somerespects, as a polity. It is increasingly a transboundary realm—one inwhich peace and prosperity can no longer be secured by territorialsovereignty. Despite this growing realization, however, our economicinstitutions, policies, and systems of governance continue to be orga-nized and directed to a large extent by nation-states. The problem with

this national orientation is that many of the most critical environ-mental and economic challenges of today are occurring at thecommunity level or at the regional and supranational levels.From greenhouse warming and world trade to neighborhoodrevitalization and job creation, nationally-centered systems ofgovernance appear increasingly inadequate to perform theessential tasks of keeping us secure, promoting our demo-cratic spirit, and anchoring our collective identities. In order

to cope successfully with the slow-motion crises of the bio-sphere and with tightly coupled local and global economic

systems, our political institutions may have to become moreglocal in design and operation. This is already happening in a few

areas. Global changes in ecology and trade are beginning to fostera devolution of power and authority away from the nation-state andtoward greater reliance on supranational, regional, and local levels ofgovernance.

This should not imply that national governments are being recklesslyweakened but merely that both global and local ends of the politicalspectrum are, in very limited ways, being strengthened. Future em-powerment of local communities and supranational entities will onlybe achieved by cautiously redistributing some of the authority pres-ently reserved by sovereign nations both up and down the lines ofgovernance, from neighborhood councils to experiments in planetarymanagement.

Glocal thinking about sustainability begins at the community andbioregional level—the level where complex living systems are mostinterdependent and vulnerable. Local watersheds, ecosystems, andmicroclimatic conditions are among the primary components of abioregion, and their alteration by human activities is much easier tounderstand from the vantage point of local communities than from themacro perspective of global ecology.

The endpoint of glocal thinking, by contrast, is all about globalinterdependence. The critical recognition is that sustainability cannotbe obtained in isolation. Communities that practice "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies in the pursuit of sustainability clearly misconstruethe concept. Just as the rich cannot continue to prosper indefinitelywithout the progress of the poor; the health of one community cannotbe assured without improving the health of others.

Securing democracy andsustainabil i ty requiresknowledge-intensive sys-tems that are attuned toglobal and regional eco-nomic restructur ingforces, as well as to com-munity and neighbor-hood-level demands forgreater self-determina-t ion. By emphasiz ingsustainability as both a lo-cal and a global goal, wehelp draw attention to theweb of interdependencythat links individual com-munities within their re-g ions and across theworld.


DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

Democratic reforms are successfully sweeping much of the world, andit is difficult to imagine a reversal of this trend that would persist in theabsence of widespread anarchy or public mind control. Less encourag-ing, however, is the fact that much of what passes for democracy hasbeen achieved with little or no meaningful deliberation on the part ofmost citizens. Without greater public deliberation, democratic normsmay erode into empty slogans of majority rule, aided by potentiallydangerous technologies for eliciting instant opinions from an unin-formed citizenry.

The problem has been that as population, territorial size, and manage-rial scale of democratic states has increased, the opportunities forthoughtful, face-to-face deliberation have declined. The ancientAthenian ideal of participatory democracy was long ago replaced bya complex system of representative democracy. While the evolvingnature of mass representation can be described as an inevitableconsequence of growth, dictated by large-scale collective secu-rity and economic development interests, the resulting diminish-ment of democracy is troubling. If the United States at itsfounding had Congressional districts the size they are today(about 600,000 people) the first Congress would have had only5 members. While our current system may be able to accom-modate continued growth for many years to come, thelegitimacy of such “procedural democracies” is beginningto be questioned.

Deliberative democracy may be the only sustainable form of populargovernment. It insures that citizens are directly engaged in the chal-lenging tasks of self rule through their participation in educative publicdiscussions about policy issues and processes. The essential feature is

The single strongest argument for glocalism is the need to connect localdecisionmaking processes that are conducive to deliberative forms ofdemocracy with environmental, economic, and human rights strate-gies that must sometimes be global, or at least regional in scope, to betruly effective. For example, if it is true that global warming willeventually require supranational policy responses, the off-settingempowerment of local communities may provide needed checks andbalances to reassure citizens interested in democracy that comprehen-sive efforts to become more sustainable on the climate front need notimply authoritarian forms of global government. Communities thatfoster face-to-face interaction, informed by a sense of place andbioregional knowledge, are essential ingredients in the formation of asustainability ethic that can simultaneously guide policy making at thelocal, regional, and global levels.

“What holds people to-gether long enough todiscover their power ascitizens is their commoninhabiting of a singleplace.”

— Daniel Kemmis


"Glocal" Thinking"Glocal" Thinking"Glocal" Thinking"Glocal" Thinking"Glocal" Thinking• Neighborhood as basicunit of planning• Community as a gather-ing of neighborhoods• Metropolitan region asthe nexus of local gover-nance• Bioregion/watershed asthe ecological referencesystem• Global coordination andlimited authority in areassuch as trade, environ-ment, and human rights.

Carrying Capacity: Thesize of a population at agiven consumption levelthat can be supported in-definitely within themeans of nature.

CARRYING CAPACITY

Spatially defined communities exist within bioregions that have lim-ited capacities to support growth in population, consumption andwaste. Because of human ingenuity and long-distance transportationtechnologies, many communities overcome local limitations by im-porting food, water, non-fuel minerals, and other resources or ecologi-cal services from far away. It is important to recognize that such effortsto redistribute carrying capacity often intensify the total human impacton the planet. Understanding this and other relationships between

open engagement in a contest of ideas in order to make informedchoices about policy or about representatives who are delegated tomake policy. All true democracies are deliberative to some extent, butas the ideal of popular deliberation has given way to the pragmaticrealities of deliberation by remote representatives, mediated by televi-sion, our reliance on community for political engagement has weak-ened.

Deliberation is best accomplished in small group settings that can beused to sample the views of ordinary citizens as they become informedabout a particular policy issue. James Fishkin, a University of Texaspolitical scientist, has pioneered a new form of public opinion pollingthat, in his words, “attempts to model what the public would think, ifit had a better opportunity to consider the question.” Unlike the“snapshot” provided by electronic referenda or conventional publicopinion polls, deliberative polls require a random sample of citizens tobe scientifically surveyed both before and after they have participatedin an intensive group study and assessment of a specific policy issue.Following completion of a baseline survey, using a representativesample of the citizenry, the respondents are invited to participate in adeliberative forum with a subsample of other respondents. The partici-pants engage in a hands-on process of small group discussions,briefings, and opportunities to cross-examine experts and politicians.They are then polled again to determine if, how, and why their opinionsmay have shifted. The results are then communicated to the generalpublic, ideally in the form of a televised summary of the deliberations.The basic idea is disarmingly simple: deliberate before rendering anopinion. The goal is to replace the sound-bite approach of today’spollsters with a more thoughtful one that overcomes some of therational ignorance and apathy that cloud modern democratic decisionmaking.

Restoring the role of community as a forum for political deliberationby no means assures that progress toward sustainability will follow. Itcan, however, provide legitimacy for movements in that direction,recognizing that the politics of place — the conduct of public life inspatially defined communities — is a powerful, albeit neglected,element in the democratic pursuit of sustainability.

According to a 1996 surveyjointly conducted byHarvard University, theWashington Post, and theKaiser Family Foundation,two-thirds of American re-spondents felt that mostpeople cannot be trusted,nearly twice the level mea-sured in the 1960s. A simi-lar poll conducted byNewsweek in 1995 revealedthat 86 percent of those sur-veyed said that their trustof other people had declinedduring the last decade. Inseeming contradiction tothis finding — but perhapsfully consistent with it — a1996 Time/CNN poll foundthat 77 percent of respon-dents said they wantedmore contact with peoplein their community.


Rules-of-Thumb forAchieving StrictSustainability

INPUT RULERenewable resources: Harvestrates of resources must be withinthe regenerative capacity of thenatural systems that producethem.

Nonrenewable resources:Rates of depletion must not ex-ceed the rate at which ecologi-cally sound, long-term resourcesubstitutes are developed.

OUTPUT RULEWaste and pollution must notexceed the assimilative capac-ity of the bioregion and mustnot degrade future absorptivecapacity or any other vital eco-logical service.

— adapted from Sarageldin, 1993

FACTORS AFFECTINGREGIONAL CARRYING CAPACITY

Water Soil Food

Time Nutrients

Energy Climate

Land Space

Forests Disease

Nonfuel Natural minerals disasters

Biodiversity| || || || || |

TRADETECHNOLOGY

ASSIMILATIVE CAPACITYREGENERATIVE CAPACITY

human and non-human nature is the central goal of ecological literacyprograms.

Four key factors determine the regional carrying capacity for a popu-lation of human beings: (1) nature’s capacity to assimilate or absorbour wastes and pollution impacts, (2) nature’s capacity to regeneratethat which we consume or destroy; (3) technology’s capacity to repairor replace (substitute for) vital resources and ecological services; and(4) the economy’s capacity, through trade, to import carrying capacityfrom distant parts of the planet.

Regional carrying capacity varies widely over both time and space.Although elastic, carrying capacity is characterized at any particularmoment by threshold effects that strictly limit the material inputs andoutputs of communities. For example, a large estuary can serve as aneffective sewage treatment plant as long as the human populationnearby is relatively small. If the population grows too much, theassimilative capacity of the estuary will be overwhelmed. Likewise,trees can be selectively harvested at sustainable rates without endan-gering the long-term viability of forests. If cutting is reckless orexcessive, however, disease, top soil erosion, and other unintendedconsequences may overwhelm the regenerative capacity of the forestsystem, leading to ruin.


“In our every delibera-tion we must considerthe impact of our deci-sions on the next sevengenerations.”— translated from the Great Law of

the Iroquois Confederation

SOCIAL & ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Without a commitment to the goals of equality and justice, novision of sustainable communities can claim enough legiti-macy to secure adequate support from the diverse peoplesthat make up our country. Even more problematic, how-ever, is the required commitment to future generations ofAmericans and to people from other countries. The needsof the here-and-now usually take precedence over the

needs of the "there-and-future."

In a sustainable community, justice and equality extend to“potential” human beings yet to be born. These ethical prin-

ciples also apply to members of other communities—both domes-tic and foreign, human and nonhuman—who are victims or beneficia-ries of the regional carrying capacity that we import and export in thepursuit of economic growth.

Many people argue that the goals of justice and equality require that acommunity continually grow in size and in wealth, thus affording alarger economic “pie” to be shared by the members. Presumably, theirdefinition of a sustainable community would be one that preserves itsquality of life by continually substituting imported resources andtechnological know-how for ecological goods and services that have tobe sacrificed during the process of growth. While they are correct thattechnology and world trade can add elasticity to regional carryingcapacity—making the assimilative and regenerative properties ofnature expandable within limits—they tend to ignore the enormousdifficulty of substituting human-made capital for natural capital in away that is globally sustainable.

The problem, in part, is that economic trade and technology haveunintended consequences that frequently cause a net reduction inavailable carrying capacity. In addition, many of the environmentalresources and services we take for granted, such as the radiationfiltering services provided by the ozone layer, may be impossible toreplace artificially. The same may be true of topsoil, which we arelosing at a rate 20-30 times faster than new soil is being formed, andother species, which are being extinguished at a rate nearly 1 milliontimes faster than they are being replaced by evolution.

The ethical dilemma suggested by our unsustainable behavior is howto balance the “rights” and interests of future generations against thoseof today’s deserving poor. There are no easy answers. We share oneearth but not one world. In fact, it would be more accurate to say thatwhat we share is the life support system that makes possible our effortsto redistribute common wealth. But as Douglas Lummis notes,“Common wealth is not something achieved by economic develop-ment but by the political ordering of a community.... The problem of

Foregone FuturesOur society continues to in-vest its best minds inthe pursuit ofq u a r t e r l yprofits, legalsufficiency,m i l i t a r ysupremacy,and techno-logical inno-vations thatcater to instantgratification. Thepriorities that guide our deci-sions are premised on an un-sustainable vision of economicgrowth that fails to distinguishadequately between satisfy-ing preferences and produc-ing satisfaction. What makesthe vision unsustainable is thepresence of ecological limits;what perpetuates it for thetime being is excessive faith intechnology and the fact thatecological limits will impingeon future generations muchmore than they do on thepresent, thus shifting the bur-den of adjustment and depri-vation to those who are nowpolitically powerless.


REGENERATIVEDESIGN involves ashift from linear tocyclical flows ofenergy and materialthroughput. Theobject is to modelhuman developmenton the operation ofnatural systems,combining the goalsof efficiency and“sufficiency” in oneenvironmentally-friendly package.

Efficiency +Efficiency +Efficiency +Efficiency +Efficiency +SufficiencySufficiencySufficiencySufficiencySufficiency

REGENERATIVE DESIGN

According to John Lyle (1994), author of a major book on regenerativedesign, “A regenerative system provides for continuous replacement,through its own functional processes, of the energy and materials usedin its operation.” The term “regenerative” refers to the capacity forrenewal. Regenerative design means nature-compatible design—theintegrative planning of our food, water, energy, shelter, and wasteprocessing systems in such a way as to minimize interference withrenewal of the landscape in which they are embedded.

Sustainable communities encourage regenerative design practicesthrough decisions about the quantity, direction, timing, and mitigationrequirements of development. Architects have been increasingly vocalabout incorporating sustainability ideas into their designs. They arguethat a community should coexist with nature in a “healthy, supportive,diverse and sustainable condition” (McDonough 1992) and that itshould have a well-defined edge, as well as a location, size, andcharacter that permit the close integration of housing, jobs, attractive

the problem of inequality lies not in poverty, but in excess.”

From a sustainable community perspective, the leading threat to future(and perhaps present) quality of life is "Affluenza"—the addiction towork-and-spend consumerism. Yes, poverty is a critical problemmenacing tens-of-thousands of communities, but consumption-driveneconomic growth is not the answer. If we truly want to deal effectivelywith questions of social and environmental justice, we will have toconfront poverty, racial discrimination and sex discrimination throughbottom-up politics, instead of trickle-down economics. We will alsohave to confront violence in our communities, including the culturalacceptance of violence in sports and entertainment, and the easyavailability of deadly weapons. Finally, we will have to discover asustainable notion of wealth — such as Helen and Scott Nearing’s “thefewness of wants” — and promote that kind of wealth across space andtime, perhaps extending to the seventh generation, as proclaimed bythe elders of the Iroquois Confederation.

The winningThe winningThe winningThe winningThe winningcombination:combination:combination:combination:combination:


“We should strive for suf-ficient per capita wealth,efficiently maintained andallocated, and equitablydistributed, for the maxi-mum number of peoplethat can be sustained overtime.”

—Herman Daly

ÞÞÞÞÞ

"For half a centuryAmerica has had onedominant vision of howits metropolitan areasought to grow and de-velop. It is best describedas unlimited low-densitysprawl. This vision en-compasses personal andsocial goods—a home inthe suburbs, a car, goodschools, responsive localgovernment—that mostAmericans cherish. Mostmetropolitan areas havesuccessfully realized thevision. Yet this achieve-ment has contributed tounexpected growth-related dilemmas thatthreaten the long-run vi-ability of American soci-ety, something the Ameri-can public and most lead-ers have yet to realize."

— Anthony Downs, 1994

DESIGN GOALS

Pedestrian-friendly

Reduced traffic congestion

Curbing of sprawl

Mixed-use development

Densification withoutcrowding

open space, cultural and recreational amenities, and facilities essentialto the daily needs of citizens (Calthorpe et al. 1991).

The obvious difficulty with many regenerative design approaches isthat so much of the landscape is already “built out” or settled in waysthat appear irreversible and that reflect unsustainable choices made inthe past. The freedom to select a different course of development oralternative lifestyle is often constrained by the path-dependent out-comes of what has come before — that is to say early design choiceshave entrained subsequent development and have made it difficult toembark in a new direction.

In view of the momentum of past development mistakes, many urbandesigners point to the importance of infrastructure decisions—espe-cially the allocation of sewer, water, and roads — as fundamental to thesuccess of both new development and redevelopment of existing areas.For many, the design of transportation systems is of paramountimportance. David Engwicht (1993), for example, argues that we cansustainably “reclaim” our cities and towns by redesigning transporta-tion on the basis of exchange instead of movement; and place insteadof destination. The principal challenge becomes one of reducingdependence on private automobiles. To that end, design for sustainabilityusually favors increased density and greater reliance on mixed landuses, both of which encourage walking and greater reliance on publictransit. Sustainable communities will tend to be compact communi-ties, partly to encourage the unfettered process of ecological renewalin the local landscape and partly to encourage human interactions thatpromote diversity, a good jobs-housing balance, and participatorydemocracy.


Design that promotes sustainability strives to balance affordablehousing needs with those of effective growth containment. By encour-aging infill-development with mixed uses and pedestrian-oriented “re-urbanization,” it is possible to direct growth to where it will have theleast deleterious impacts and, at the same time, help to energizeneighborhoods and communities.

ÞÞÞÞÞ

URBAN ARCHITECTURE WITH AN ATTITUDE“Americans sense that something is wrong with the places where welive and work and go about our daily business. We hear thisunhappiness expressed in phrases like “no sense of place” and “theloss of community.” We drive up and down the gruesome, tragicsuburban boulevards of commerce, and we’re overwhelmed at thefantastic, awesome, stupefying ugliness of absolutely everything insight — the fry pits, the big-box stores, the office units, the lubejoints, the carpet warehouses, the parking lagoons, the jive plastictownhouse clusters, the uproar of signs, the highway itself cloggedwith cars — as though the whole thing had been designed by somediabolical force bent on making human beings miserable.”

“I believe that we have entered a kind of slow-motion culturalmeltdown, owing largely to our living habits, though many ordinaryAmericans wouldn’t agree. They may or may not be doing all rightin the changing economy, but they have personal and psychologicalinvestments in going about business as usual. Many Americanshave chosen to live in suburbia out of historic antipathy for life inthe city and particularly a fear of the underclass that has come todwell there. They would sooner move to the dark side of the moonthan consider city life.”

—James Howard Kuntsler, 1996


Nearly two-thirds of our urban population live in suburbs. About 4million live in gated communities designed for protection from crimeand various impositions of urban life. Although most signs point tomore “urban forts” and suburban sprawl in our future, these trends arenot destiny. Sustainability-minded communities are unlikely to emergeas “no-growth” enclaves, where wealth and isolation determine qualityof life. Successful communities will recognize that present settlementpatterns are not only unsustainable but socially debilitating. Thepolitical question they must face is not how to keep “dollars in andpeople out” but how much growth to accommodate for the sake ofhumanity and how much humanity to accommodate for the sake ofgrowth. The ideology of growth says accommodate! accommodate!The ethic of sustainability requires a much more measured response.

Infrastructure Report CardA crumbling infrastructure cannot support a sustainable society. According to the American Society of CivilEngineers (ASCE), more than $1 trillion of investment is needed for repairs and improvements nationwideto protect our health, safety, and environment. Panels of engineering experts graded the overall condition ofthe nation’s infrastructure in 1998, rating community drinking water facilities and dams a “D,” wastewatertreatment a “D+,” public school buildings an “F,” mass transit a “C,” roads and hazardous waste facilities a“D-,” and airports, solid waste, and bridges a “C-.” The engineers noted no overall improvement in the pastten years and warned that the condition of many facilities was getting worse.

— Report Card for America’s Infrastructure (ASCE, 1998)

The UltimateThe UltimateThe UltimateThe UltimateThe UltimateDesignDesignDesignDesignDesign

ChallengeChallengeChallengeChallengeChallenge"In the coming inter-"In the coming inter-"In the coming inter-"In the coming inter-"In the coming inter-val of a few decades,val of a few decades,val of a few decades,val of a few decades,val of a few decades,human society willhuman society willhuman society willhuman society willhuman society willneed to house, nur-need to house, nur-need to house, nur-need to house, nur-need to house, nur-ture, educate, andture, educate, andture, educate, andture, educate, andture, educate, andemploy as many moreemploy as many moreemploy as many moreemploy as many moreemploy as many morepeople as already livepeople as already livepeople as already livepeople as already livepeople as already liveon earth."on earth."on earth."on earth."on earth."

–Jesse Ausubel

WHAT ON EARTH CAN I DO?Personal Action Guide for Sustainable Living

The “Big Five”• Consider having fewer children, or none. There is probably no single greater impact you can have on the biosphere than choosing to limit the number of children you bring into the world.• Reduce your carbon footprint by conserving energy through efficiency improvements and promoting greater use of renewable energy sources.• Choose a sustainable diet: eat less meat (reduce the heavy impacts of livestock on land, water, and greenhouse gas emissions) and promote sustainable agriculture.• Conserve freshwater and promote efforts to keep it clean and publically available.• Educate yourself about ways to preserve wild places and the diverse creatures that share our world.

In Community• Get to know the place where you live as a bioregion, rather than as just a settlement or political jurisdiction. For example, where does your water originate? What are your local food sources? How has the landscape changed over time?• Meet your native plants and animals—appreciate the roles they play in your health and welfare.• Support policies that curb unnecessary road-building, urban sprawl, loss of open space and destruction of native habitat.• With your income, instead of buying more, bigger or fancier things, reward yourself with less stuff and a simpler life that allows more freedom, and more time for family, friends and building community.

In the Home• In summer, close curtains to keep sun/heat out. Rely on fans more than air conditioning.• In winter, open curtains during the day to let sun in. Put on a sweater instead of turning up the heat; use an extra blanket on the bed.• Heat, cool & light only those rooms in use.• Use energy efficient lighting, such as compact fluorescent bulbs. They initially cost more, but last many times longer.• Save water—turn it off! Repair dripping faucets; install low-flow devices on taps, showers and toilets.• Recycle. More importantly, buy recycled (“close the loop”).• Use alternatives to toxic cleaners, such as vinegar and baking soda.• Avoid processed foods; eat in a way that benefits your health.• Eat lower on the food chain—especially eat less far-traveled beef and seafood.• Check into household solar, utility-based wind, and other renewable energy systems.• Extra insulation saves money.

When Shopping• Ask yourself, “Do I really want to keep this forever?” Every purchase planned, needed and cared for.• Take your own shopping bag.• Avoid products designed to be used once and thrown away.• Avoid excessively packaged products.• Demand recycled-content products, such as recycled paper products.• Support local farmers. Buy locally grown and organically grown produce.

Transport• Support public transportation initiatives and funding.• Reduce individual use of your car—walk, bicycle, use public transport, carpool.

• Live near your work and/or activities.• Buy a car with low fuel consumption. Rent on those rare occasions when you need something bigger or more powerful.• Recycle your engine oil. Never pour it down the drain or on the ground.

In the Garden• Plant trees, particularly native trees.• Grow (preferably native) plants that are appropriate for your place and climate.• Grow some of your own fruit, herbs and vegetables. Green is the basis of life.• Start a compost pile and/or a worm bin. Compost is great fertilizer and mulch.• Mulch to reduce water needs; install an irrigation system that puts water where needed.• Avoid chemicals, herbicides and insecticides. Use natural nontoxic alternatives. Host helpful insects.

At Work• Start an office conservation committee; practice energy efficiency, recycling and buying recycled.• Work toward a paperless office: use email.• Encourage your employer to carry out an energy audit, and implement the recommendations.• Ensure your office air-conditioning and heating are set at realistic comfort levels.• Install timers to turn off lights and heat (or air) after a certain time at night.• Consider whether a business trip involving distance travel is really necessary, or if the business can be conducted by electronic means.

Population• Every child planned, wanted and loved.• If you want a large family, adopt.• Don’t put pressure on your children to have grandchildren for you.• Love other people’s children; become a mentor, tutor or coach.• Promote population and environmental education in your schools. Encourage schools to invite speakers and show films on sustainability issues.• Support family planning: urge your legislators to fund family planning programs in your community and abroad.• Elect officials who support family planning, environmental protection and conservation.• Talk about population and sustainability issues—engage in social discourse that explores complex issues, avoids stereotyping and extremism, and searches for solutions.

Principles for Action• The planet Earth does not grow.• Without population stabilization, there can be no sustainable future. Human population and lifestyle consumption must not exceed nature’s carrying capacity.• Recognize the moral and civil obligation to care for other people and other forms of life.• Humankind must maintain ecological processes that keep the planet fit for life; protect and encourage biodiversity; and not use resources beyond sustainable rates.• Halt dependence on oil and coal, transition off of gas, and switch to renewable energy sources.• Cultivate a culture of sufficiency to accompany an economy based on efficiency.• Economic growth cannot be the only aim of development. Economic incentives should be provided for sustainable behaviors.• Citizens should be truthfully informed, and then empowered, so they can make decisions for genuine progress.• Secure as many opportunities for future generations as we have.

by Monty and Marilyn Hempel

THE CONSUMPTION CHALLENGE

US communities account for nearly a quarter of the world’s currentfossil fuel consumption and a third of the world’s paper and paper-board consumption. A child born today in the US, over the course ofan average lifetime, consumes more than 1.5 million pounds ofminerals, 4,000 barrels of oil, 54,000 pounds of plant matter, and64,000 pounds of animal products, while at the same time generatingover 3 million pounds of atmospheric wastes, 23 million pounds ofliquid wastes, and 3 million pounds of solid wastes (Charles Hall et al.,1994).

This combination of direct personal consumption and indirect agricul-tural and industrial consumption entails enormous environmentalcosts, both direct and indirect, in the form of air and water pollution,fossil fuel depletion, and other impacts related to resource extraction,processing, and transportation. Modern agriculture consumes hugeamounts of environmentally costly water, fertilizer, and pesticides,while displacing millions of rural farmers in developing countries,many of whom turn to ecologically sensitive forests and frontier areasin search of marginally productive land.

Although some scientists have argued that the world’s soil couldsupport 15 billion vegetarians, they would presumably have to bevegetarians who refused to own cars, spacious houses, or televisionsdisplaying advertising that effectively encouraged growth of materialconsumption.

Much of our overconsumption is either cultivated or legislated. Forexample, mass advertising creates inordinate desires for what arecalled “status goods” or “positional goods.” Some government poli-cies produce a similar effect. Building a house requires compliancewith planning and zoning regulations, building codes, and local healthand safety laws that virtually preclude simple structures that rely ona bare minimum of scarce resources to provide shelter. While theseotherwise laudable and necessary regulations help to maximize safety,size, and comfort in one’s home, they create zones of ecological

THE FOUR GREATEST CHALLENGESTO SUSTAINABILITY

The Consumption ChallengeThe Population Challenge

The Equity ChallengeThe Governance Challenge

ANNUAL U.S.CONSUMPTION(per person)

ENERGY60 barrels of oil equivalent

WATER552,000 gallons(over 1,500 gallons/day)

SOLID WASTE2,500 lbs.

LAND CONSUMPTIONBetween 1970 and 1990, thepopulation of the city of LosAngeles increased by 45%,while its land consumption fordevelopment and housing in-creased by nearly 300%. InChicago, the residential popu-lation grew by only 4% dur-ing this same period, but landconsumption grew more than10 times faster (46%). Simi-larly, Kansas City’s popula-tion grew by less than 30%between 1960 and 1990, yet itsland consumption increasedby 110%.


sacrifice elsewhere in order to provide the requisite timber, plastics,metals, and waste depositories. Reinforcing the entire process is abarrage of beguiling images of fame and fortune in our movies,television shows, and magazines that are intended to cultivate addi-tional wants and then to transform them into felt needs. In much of theworld, quality is still confused with quantity. More is seen as better, andeven lifestyles of instant gratification seem to require too muchwaiting.

THE POPULATION CHALLENGE

Perhaps the single greatest challenge in building sustainable commu-nities will be to stabilize human population. Today’s 5.9 billion humanbeings represent a one-thousand-fold increase over the estimatedpopulation of 100 centuries ago. Nearly 3 billion of these people havebeen added in just the last 40 years, largely as a result of decliningmortality rates. Although birth rates are dropping, the world will addanother billion people during the next 12 years—about 3 persons persecond. Consider that this century began with only 1.6 billion people.Looking at the United States, some demographers believe that we maygrow from 270 million today to as much as 700-800 million by the endof the next century, although many believe that a population of lessthan 500 million is more probable.

It is remarkable that our species, which appeared only within the lastone-thousandth of our planet’s history, is growing so rapidly that itthreatens literally millions of other species with extinction. Clearly, italso threatens our own future, at least in terms of quality of life, thepotential for self-governance, and the promise of community.

The idea of sustainable communities reminds us that it is not only thebiological carrying capacity that is in danger of being exhausted byhuman population pressure but the social and political “carryingcapacity,” as well. Projecting present trends into the future leaves littleroom for optimism. Long before we run out of resources and vitalecological services, quality of life thresholds may be breached andincentives for mass migration may transform the remaining biological,social, and cultural diversity of the earth into one giant homogenousexpanse of human artifact. The prospects for widespread democraticreform in such a world are very poor. The concept of communitybecomes chimerical.

We must be careful not to permit nationalism, racism, and economicprotectionism to find expression in the solutions to overpopulation.Population agendas that allow this expression are far more likely tofoster polarization than stabilization. Responding to the problem ofpopulation growth will require cultural sensitivity and a clear recogni-tion that current patterns of unsustainability are affected by per capitaconsumption rates as much or more than by total fertility rates.

US Population

1950: 152 million

1998: 270 million

2025: 335 million (est.)

“More people will livein cities by 2025 thanoccupied the wholeplanet 10 years ago.”

—World Resources Institute


“When inequality be-comes too great, the ideaof community becomesimpossible.”

—Raymond Aron

Ten Reasons for Stabilizing Human Population

1. Reduce scale and rate of environmental destruction

2. Reduce consumption of nonrenewable resources andunsustainable yields of renewable resources

3. Reduce pressure on community (congestion, sprawl,pollution, public health threats, poverty, and violence)

4. Preserve greenspace, wildlife habitat, and rural life styles

5. Preserve opportunities for participatory and deliberativedemocracy

6. Reduce bureaucracy, social regulation, and litigation

7. Reduce growth-induced taxes, debt, and infrastructurecosts

8. Reduce competition for space, jobs, and social services

9. Promote maintenance of existing infrastructure overexpansion and new construction

10. Enhance quality of life for future generations

THE EQUITY CHALLENGEThe basic fairness of any society can be seen in its practices andpolicies to limit inequality. Unfortunately, our society is not function-ing well in this respect.

Over the past 25 years, the real incomes of the richest fifth of Americanfamilies with children under the age of 18 increased by about 30percent, while those in the poorest fifth declined by approximately 20percent. Between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, the before-taxincome gap between the highest 20 percent and the middle 20 percentof families also increased, so much so that 40 states had higher incomegaps by 1995 than any state had in the late 1970s (Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities 1997).

The growing gap in income and in wealth between the rich and poor isresulting in perverse incentives to close the gap at the expense of theenvironment. Developing farmland to provide affordable housing is afamiliar example. Even if the standard of living for the poorest of thepoor begins to improve, their experience of relative deprivation(falling further behind even as their incomes grow) may intensifypressures for unsustainable development.

The problem is compounded in developing countries. Residents ofmany Third World communities, their appetites for status goods and


"Unlike plagues of thedark ages or contemporarydiseases we do not yetunderstand, the modernplague of overpopulationis soluble by means wehave discovered and withresources we possess.What is lacking is notsufficient knowledge ofthe solution but universalconsciousness of thegravity of the problem andeducation of the billionswho are its victims."

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our goal should not beperfect equality, butlimited inequality.Where large gaps inincome, wealth, tech-nology, or coercivepower permit one com-munity to impose its willon another, the strugglefor sustainability is lost.Acknowledging our in-terdependence is thefirst step in becomingmore sustainable.

THE GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE

Governance is the deliberative mechanism or process we use to makeauthoritative political choices about our future. It involves far morethan government, especially in democratic societies. The challenge,simply stated, is whether community-based democratic governancecan thrive in a world of fast-moving science, unforgiving technology,and global economic integration. Those who think communities canbecome sustainable through skillful design, volunteerism, and the“greening of consciousness,” and then somehow operate politically

services whetted by the spread of global communications technologyand mass media advertising, aspire to consume at western levels thatare almost universally regarded by today’s youth as indicators ofpersonal importance and success. The great wealth of the industrializedcountries, and the fact that so much of it was purchased at the expenseof nature, is seized on by developing countries to justify the rapidexploitation of their own natural resources, and to excuse as temporarythe inclination to ignore the environmental costs of conventionaldevelopment. The self-destructive psychology of the situation is evi-dent in the words of an African observer attending the 1992 EarthSummit: “We’ll never catch up to America if we seriously worry abouttrees and elephants and greenhouse gases.”

Unfortunately, “catching up to America” could become the ultimateroadblock for achieving the goals of sustainable community. In aworld where 60 percent of humanity holds only 6 percent of the wealth,finding ways to limit inequality has to become part of our sustainabilityvision.

Confronting poverty, racial discrimination and sex discrimination area big part of what is needed to combat problems of equity. Another partinvolves the equity implications of relying on market-based solutionsto solve social and environmental problems. Because most sustainabilitystrategies call for internalizing social costs (for example, paying forsome of the hidden costs of driving—air pollution and climate change—by doubling the tax on gasoline), it will be important to devise equitymitigation measures to accompany such pricing strategies. The idea isto protect those at the bottom of the income distribution, for whom suchincreases represent a far greater burden in terms of ability to pay.

Imagine what might happen if our society devoted even five percentof its public administrators and social scientists to the cause of devisinginnovative strategies for equity mitigation. Perhaps we would all haveto stop hiding behind the expression, “What about the poor?” everytime we selfishly oppose some proposal to internalize the costs ofunsustainability in the price of oil, water, land, or any of the pricelessecological services we take for granted.


on automatic pilot, commit a grave error. Good governance is aprecondition for building sustainable communities; not a result.

There are many imposing hurdles facing those who seek to create amore just, efficient, and community-based system of governance.Surmounting the enormous obstacles to reform will require that wepay less attention to the diversionary “joysticks” of incremental policymanipulation and firmly grasp the fundamental “levers” of social andpolitical change. Among the most important of these levers arecampaign finance reform, tax policy, regionalism, and the design andpublic reporting of new economic and sustainability indicators.

1. CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORMNo matter how innovative and politically engaged the citizens of aparticular community may be, their capacity to govern is nested withina much larger federal system of representative government. Thewidely perceived erosion of legitimacy now taking place in that systemmay, if unchecked, act like a paretic poison within the body politic.Continued progress toward sustainability depends on campaign re-forms that will renew democracy and permit genuine competition ofideas and viewpoints in public deliberation.

The difficulty of adopting and enforcing meaningful reforms incampaign finance are well known to any astute political observer.Legal influence-peddling has rapidly expanded under the pressuresthat candidates face in financing expensive television ads. In the 1996election, candidates for President and for Congress collectively spentan estimated $1.6 billion on their campaigns. The cost of a successfulcampaign in the Senate averaged more than $4 million per seat.Because of the infusion of “soft money” raised by political parties andthe use of campaign ads cleverly disguised as independent “issueadvocacy,” these amounts understate the actual funding and influencein campaign politics today.

By ruling that campaign spending is a form of free speech, the SupremeCourt (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976 ) sharply limited the remedies availablefor reducing the influence of money in politics. Despite this constraint,however, important options remain for giving free television time toviable candidates, restricting soft money contributions, ending thepractice of “stealth” campaign advertising through issue advocacy,and greatly expanding the provisions for public financing of elections.

Without comprehensive campaign reform, it is hard to imagine in afederal system how the deliberative democracy needed to build sus-tainable communities can itself endure.


“We shouldn’t discountthe possibility of inven-tions in governance andin the structure of marketsthemselves. After all, theUnited States is such aninvention.”

— Peter Ordeshook, 1992

“...the current systemtaxes heavily that whichshould be encouraged —enterprise and human la-bor. Meanwhile, it taxeslightly or even subsidizesthe use of natural re-sources that humanityneeds to husband and con-serve. Employers pay aheavy fine, in the form ofSocial Security taxes,workers’ compensation,and the rest, when theyhire somebody. But theyget big write-offs whenthey help to drain theworld’s natural re-sources.”

—Cobb, Halstead, and Rowe, 1995

2. TAX SHIFTThe revenue that supports public spending is drawn heavily from taxeson activities that a sustainable society needs to encourage —productivework, investment, and savings. A growing number of Americans areintrigued by the possibilities of shifting some of the present tax onincome and payroll to forms of consumption that degrade or threatenour quality of life. Since much of this destructive consumption isheavily subsidized, it behooves us to replace some of the income andpayroll taxes that target sustainable behaviors and activities with taxesthat will reduce some of the unwanted social and environmentalexternalities of our present way of life.

Such a revenue-neutral tax shift could include the imposition of new oradditional taxes on polluting, smoking, driving, drinking, logging ofold-growth forests, strip mining, sprawling urbanization, high-impactfarming, wasteful irrigating, overfishing, fossil-fuel-guzzling cars,toxics-laden manufacturing, and dozens of other unhealthy and unsus-tainable products and activities. Although even gradual shifts of thiskind would be very controversial, the present tax structure is sure toremain even more controversial.

In an era in which so much public time and attention is focused on thesize of the tax bite, we need to be thinking about the appropriate targetsof taxation, including what types of taxes contribute to the aims ofsustainability. Is it really desirable to impose a combined tax on middleincome families amounting to nearly one-third of their take-home pay,but collect from zero to a few pennies-on-the-dollar for the consump-tion of pesticides, nonrenewable energy, vanishing ground water, orold-growth timber? How about the failure to tax production of air,water, and soil pollutants? And how should we reconcile payroll taxes,which generate 36% of federal revenue, with the income tax exemp-tions and other subsidies, estimated at $111 billion a year (Roodman1996), that the federal government provides for driving, servicing,regulating, and parking private motor vehicles?

Tax shifting is certain to produce big winners and losers during thetransition. The total cost of not shifting, however, is likely to be farlarger—in terms of sustainability, economic wealth and social equity.

3. REGIONALISMBecause the strong interdependence of communities is not adequatelyreflected in most regional coordination mechanisms and intergovern-mental cooperation agreements, there is a growing need to addressmany sustainability issues at the metropolitan level. The basic notion isthat progress toward sustainable communities cannot be achievedwithout a regional vision and institutional framework to facilitate it.This does not mean regional government, per se. It does, however,suggest a more integrated system of governance to manage and, whereappropriate, to enhance the powerful regional and globalizing forcesthat are shaping our future. A major challenge will be to reconcile the


Sustainable communitiesare gatherings of neighbor-hoods that manage to de-velop regional perspec-tives.

Metropolitan regions arelarge enough to addressmost urban problems eco-logically and small enoughto resolve them politically.In many cases they providethe optimal scale for inte-grated planning and infra-structure design. They pro-vide a hopeful means forcreating a sustainable com-munity of communities.

In rural areas, watershedcouncils and similar formsof regional coordinationmay prove to be especiallyuseful for this purpose.

4. INDICATOR DEVELOPMENT & REPORTINGIndicators are like magnifying glasses that make visible the hidden andcomplex interactions that we call change. They convey informationabout the condition of our world, its inhabitants, and the trends that driveour economies, socio- cultural systems, and relationships with nature.

Just like a physician diagnosing a fever by measuring the patient’s bodytemperature, the indicators a society uses to measure the economy(GNP, for example) or educational performance (grades), or any of athousand other trends and activities, serve to inform our understandingand decisions. The problem is that we tend to have very selective

governance of growth (in people, consumption, and land use) with thedevelopment of sustained economic opportunities.

Many of the costs and benefits of growth can only be addressed throughregional and sub-regional cooperation. For example, growth manage-ment on a city-by-city basis often diverts or redistributes population toareas that are even more vulnerable and less prepared for it. Similarly,cutthroat competition among communities for commercial tax revenuesmay bring temporary benefits to one community at the cost of long-termeconomic security for the region. A community-based regional ap-proach to governance may encourage more sustainable developmentpatterns. Regional approaches expose the folly of growth strategies thatpromote one community’s improvement at the expense of other com-munities. They serve to limit parochialism and the short-sighted devel-opment patterns that threaten quality of life and strain local capacity forrepresentation, coordination and cooperation.

Regional approaches now underway include such familiar measures asarea-wide privatization or nonprofitization, functional transfers be-tween government units, intermunicipal service agreements, and re-gional special purpose governments, as well as more unusual innova-tions, such as regional multi-purpose districts (e.g., Minneapolis-St.Paul, Portland), two-tiered metropolitan federations (e.g., Toronto), andcity-county consolidations (e.g., San Francisco).


indicators that measure the gnat population around the lightbulb whilemissing the elephant in the doorway. We have monitored the status of thestock market with dizzying precision but almost missed the destruction ofthe ozone layer due to chlorofluorocarbons.

Good governance depends to a great extent on the choice of reliable “vitalsign” indicators that can be tracked over time, periodically reported to thepublic, and used to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, equity, andsustainability of practices and policies. The choice of key indicators isdoubly important at the neighborhood and community level, because it ishere that the collective “pulse” and “bloodpressure” of humanity can beseparated from the background noise of large and geographically diversepopulations. The central challenge in this regard is to improve governance—without expanding bureaucratic government—by constructing indica-tors that truly inform the public about the condition of their communities.

A summary of sustainability indicators and practical applications isprovided in the next section.

1. Clear Visions, Goals, and Action Plans

2. Compatible Social, Environmental, & Economic Objectives

3. Committed Leaders who Empower Others

4. Ability to Measure, Communicate, Account for Progress

example: regional sustainability indicator reports

5. Tools to Integrate and Envision Complex Information

example: Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

6. Regional Coordination of Local Efforts

7. Partnerships Based on Shared Power & Responsibility

8. Action Driven by Public Education and Involvement

9. Build on Small Successes

10. Flexible/Adaptive Strategies and Implementation Plans

CLEAR VISIONS

COMPATIBLEGOALS

GOOD LEADERS

MEASURABLEPROGRESS

GOOD TOOLS

COORDINATORS

PARTNERSHIPS

INVOLVEMENT

SMALL SUCCESSES

ADAPTIVEMANAGEMENT

TEN KEY INGREDIENTS FOR

BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

—Adapted from Top 10 Watershed Lessons Learned, EPA Office of Wetlands, Oceans, & Watersheds


SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS

Indicators of community sustainability are measures of change in theactivities and forces that shape human settlements and their interac-tions with non-human nature. They are essentially integrative mea-sures of economic, social, and ecological health that are designed togauge a community’s systemic balance and resilience over longperiods of time. Each indicator must be periodically monitored forchanges in direction and intensity. Taken together, they indicatecommunity assets, liabilities, and regional capacity to meet presentand future needs in ways that do not sacrifice quality of life orimportant opportunities for future generations.

Examples of indicators (see Table 1) include the ratio of job growth topopulation growth, pounds of solid waste landfilled per person, highschool graduation rates, and voter turnout in off-year elections. Nosingle indicator is adequate to measure a community’s sustainabilityand many indicators have to be tailored to unique settings and circum-stances in order to become useful and reliable. Despite these limita-tions, a carefully selected battery of indicators can reveal much abouta community’s movement toward or away from the goals of a persis-tently healthy, liveable community.

Many indicators used in monitoring community sustainability can bequestioned in terms of their accessibility or appropriateness. Somerequire expensive forms of data collection or interpretation by experts,and others just don’t seem to fit the common definitions of whatsustainable community means. In general, it is better to be inclusiveand recognize that many indicators only take on meaning forsustainability when combined with other indicators. As for accessibil-ity, some of the simplest indicators can be the most profound. Con-sider, for example, the “popsicle access” indicator. This indicatorinvolves a rough estimate of how many children over the age of fivecan safely walk to purchase a popsicle within five minutes of theirhome. Implied in this simple indicator are issues of crime, trafficsafety, animal control, pedestrian and bicycle route design, distribu-tion of “mom-and-pop” convenience stores, urban density, and manyother considerations of community welfare and design.

More sophisticated indicators can be used to measure everything fromlocal institutional capacity (e.g., annual tax capacity per household tosupport public services) to noise exposure (e.g., number of childrenexposed to air and ground traffic noise levels above 50 decibelsbetween 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.). Other unusual indicators, some technicaland some tricky to interpret, include the “greenspace-blackspaceratio” (ratio of park land and open space to paved area), the closelyrelated “impervious surface area” (areas impermeable to rainfall thatcontribute to runoff), “smart schools” (schools with high-speed internetaccess), “living wage jobs” (percentage of workers making at least


The indicators a societychooses to report to itselfabout itself are surpris-ingly powerful. Theyreflect collective valuesand inform collectivedecisions. A nation thatkeeps a watchful eye onits salmon runs or thesafety of its streets makesdifferent choices thandoes a nation that is onlypaying attention to itsGNP. The idea of citi-zens choosing their ownindicators is somethingnew under the sun—something intenselydemocratic.

—Donella Meadows

50% more than minimum wage level), “litigiousness” (lawsuits filedannually per 1,000 residents), and the “ten-ten income ratio” (ratio ofdollar incomes of top 10% of households to bottom 10%).

Using advanced information technologies—especially geographicinformation systems (GIS)—these indicators can be overlaid, mappedand compared within and across regions to provide powerful ways tovisualize the complex interactions that influence a community’s over-all sustainability index or “scorecard.” Using color-keyed maps oftrends and conditions monitored at the neighborhood, community andregional levels, GIS offers a practical means for analyzing how thehuman and natural landscapes are changing over time, and why. Therecent introduction of simple yet highly sophisticated desktop GIScomputer software promises to make this capability available andaffordable to even the smallest local governments, school districts, andcommunity organizations.

Perhaps the most critical constraint on the development and use ofsustainability indicators involves the role of ordinary citizens in theirselection and interpretation. Deliberative democracy is, in many eyes,both a means and an end of the sustainable community movement. Ifdeliberative democracy is conducive to the process of sustainability,and vice versa, it is important that citizens participate in the selectionof indicators that will be used to evaluate their community and region.Although such involvement will sometimes lead to the inclusion ofindicators that so-called “experts” regard as unscientific, irrelevant, orunreliable, to exclude such grass-roots involvement may reveal, asclearly as any indicator, a basic cause of unsustainability—lack ofcivic engagement.

à

GDP: An Overusedand Misused Indicator

For those who believe thateconomic growth is theroot of happiness, GrossNational Product (GNP)and Gross Domestic Prod-uct (GDP) indicate thatour collective quality oflife has more than doubledsince 1950. But an alter-native indicator — theGenuine Progress Indica-tor (GPI), which assignscosts to such things ascrime, family breakdown,underemployment, andthe loss of species andprime farmland— revealsa very different pattern: apositive advance from1950 to 1970, followedby a steady decline sincethen.

“Specifically, the GPI re-veals that much of whatwe now call growth orGDP is really just one ofthree things in disguise:fixing blunders and so-cial decay from the past,borrowing resources fromthe future, or shiftingfunctions from the tradi-tional realm of the house-hold and community to therealm of the monetizedeconomy.”—Cobb, Halstead, and Rowe, 1995


Table 1SELECTED INDICATORS

COMMUNITY PROFILE (BASELINE) INFORMATION

Demographic: population, ethnicity, age distribution, etc.Land: land area, topography, natural hazards, habitat, watershedsCitizen/Consumer lifestyle: cost of living, cultural valuesBusiness: manufacturers, self-employed businesses, commercial

spacePhysical Infrastructure: utilities (water, sewer, energy, solid

waste), transportationSocial infrastructure : government, schools, places of worship,

parks & recreation, arts, civic groups & service clubs

SAMPLE INDICATORS, BY SECTORECONOMICCommercial vacancy rateAnnual ratio of business startups to business failuresRatio of manufacturing to service jobsNet job growthSkilled and unskilled labor force unemployment ratesPercentage of labor force working for the top five employersAverage and median income levelsRatio of income to debt (per cap. personal income/municipal debt)

ENVIRONMENTALBad air days (days/year with PSI levels greater than 100)Water consumption rate (water withdrawal as percentage of supply)Solid waste landfilled (pounds of garbage per person per year)Years of remaining landfill space at current rates of solid waste generationCarbon dioxide emissions per personNumber of environmental education programs/projects in schoolsEcological footprint (both household and community)Annual Audubon bird countToxics releases (emissions in pounds per person)Average fecal coliform bacteria count for local stream monitoring stationsIndoor air quality (sample radon levels)

SOCIALGraduation rate by ethnicityPercentage of high school graduates going on to higher educationCity financial support of arts organization, annually, per personAnnual donations to United Way, per personVoter turnout in municipal, off-year electionsLibrary circulation ratesNumber of active neighborhood watch groupsViolent crime rates per 10,000 residentsReported cases of child abuse or neglect per 1,000 people under 18DUI arrests per 10,000 residentsRatio of richest 10% of households to poorest 10% (dollar ratio of income)Percentage of children living in povertyPacks of cigarettes sold per person per yearPercent of population covered by health insurancePercent of two-year olds who are adequately immunizedChild care spaces available as percentage of estimated demand


In characterizing sustainability indicator projects, it is helpful todistinguish among ongoing efforts in terms of their geographic scope— municipal, county, regional, or statewide. Table 2 on the next pageprovides a sample of activity now underway in the US, with emphasison efforts taking place in western states. The thirty projects selectedhere are among approximately 150 projects known to be usingsustainability indicators. Although nearly 700 sustainability projectsin all have been identified by Public Research Incorporated, and moreare in the planning stages, we have limited our focus to projects thatpromote the use or development of indicators. Projects of this kindappear to offer promising insights into the state of our communities andtheir residents’ progress (or lack of it) in achieving more sustainablelifestyles.

As you can quickly see, a wide range of communities have projectsunderway. The projects follow diverse pathways and designs, includ-ing the rural watershed approach taken by Willapa, Washington, theCity of Austin’s Green Building Program, which uses a sustainabilitymatrix to assess proposed development, and the Sierra BusinessCouncil's "wealth index," which combines measures of social capital,natural capital, and financial capital.

For readers wanting to learn aboutthe many other communities andprojects underway, excellent infor-mation is now available on theinternet at the following World-WideWeb addresses (a sample of the morethan 400 sustainability sites nowavailable):

• Redefining Progress http://www.rprogress.org

• US EPA http://www.epa.gov/region03/ greenkit

• US DOE Center for Excellence for Sustainable Development http://www.sustainable.doe.gov

• Hart Environmental Data http://www.subjectmatters.com/ indicators

• Sustainable Communities Network http://www.sustainable.org

• International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) http://www.iclei.org

MIXED (Cross-Cutting and Combined)Ratio of job growth to population growthLivable-wage-job creation rate (proportion of jobs paying at least 10% above

poverty level, or at least 50% more than hourly minimum wage)Ratio of emissions-to-manufacturing jobs (E/J)Ratio of city street and highway miles to miles of transit servicePopulation density of residentially zoned landGreenspace to blackspace ratio (park & open space/paved surface area)Per person consumption levels for energy, water, beef, plastics, etc.Dollar value of infrastructure needing major repairs or replacementPercent of households able to afford median priced homeAverage peak-hour congestion level on major local roadsPercentage of schools with high-speed internet connections

Community Survey-Based Indicators:Satisfaction with city/county government servicesPerceived quality of government leadership and responsivenessCommunity group participation (hours per month per person)Youth participating in community servicePercentage of residents who know the name of one next-door neighborCommunity volunteerism by age groupProportion expecting good times ahead for local economy/regionPopulation with regular internet access at home, school, or workPerception of education quality, crime, traffic congestion, job security, environ-

mental quality, and arts and entertainment opportunities


ÞßàÞßàÞßàÞßàÞßà

Tab

le 2

SA

MP

LE O

F 30

SU

STA

INA

BIL

ITY

IND

ICA

TO

R P

RO

JEC

TS

CIT

Y,

CO

UN

TY

, R

EG

ION

AL

, &

STA

TE


PL

AC

E, P

RO

GR

AM

& S

CO

PE

IN

DIC

AT

OR

S B

Y T

YP

EP

RO

FIL

E I

NF

OR

MA

TIO

N

Nam

eSc

ope

(1)

Tot

alE

nvir

.So

cial

Eco

n.M

ixed

Pop

ulat

ion

Pop

. Cha

nge

(2)

Den

sity

(3)

Edu

.(4

)In

com

e(5

)P

over

ty(6

)C

rim

e(7

)H

ome

Ow

ners

(8)

Alb

uque

rque

, NM

Sust

aina

ble

Alb

uque

rque

199

6L

6120

257

939

8,49

219

.7%

3,01

428

.4%

$27,

555

10.3

%10

,284

57.3

%

Aus

tin,

TX

Sust

aina

ble

Com

mun

itie

s In

itia

tive

199

6L

187

56

*49

2,32

942

.3%

2,26

034

.4%

$14.

295

17.9

%11

,295

40.6

%

Bou

lder

Cou

nty,

CO

Bou

lder

Cou

nty'

s R

epor

t C

ard

1996

C54

2610

414

238,

196*

25.6

%32

142

.1%

$17,

359

5.6%

4,21

263

.2%

Che

sape

ake,

MD

Mea

suri

ng O

ur P

rogr

ess

1991

R40

342

13

57,1

7065

%26

617

.6$1

7,25

15.

2%2,

507

85%

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umbi

a-P

acif

ic, O

R &

WA

Com

mun

ity

Sust

aina

bili

ty I

ndic

ator

sR

114

34

-34

,097

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$25,

135

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2964

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%

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ire

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nty,

WI

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cato

rs o

f C

omm

. Sus

tain

abil

ity

1996

C23

791

6952

2486

,638

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136

20.9

%$2

5,88

69.

4%42

8264

.5%

Flor

ida

Flo

rida

Ben

chm

arki

ng 1

992

S13

519

9321

213

,482

,716

38.3

%25

018

.3%

$27,

483

9%85

4767

.2%

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envi

lle

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y, S

CC

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unit

y In

dica

tors

199

3C

614

4511

132

7,55

813

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414

21%

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918

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%6,

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66.2

%

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ilto

n C

nty,

TN

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e in

H. C

.(C

hatt

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ga)

1994

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121

152,

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%1,

291

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%$2

2,91

714

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12,6

6554

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awai

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la H

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199

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4,48

527

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sonv

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lity

of

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198

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NO

TE

S(1

) L =

Loc

al c

omm

unity

; C =

Cou

nty;

R =

Reg

iona

l; S =

Sta

tew

ide;

(2)

per

cent

age

chan

ge in

pop

ulat

ion

1980

-199

2; (

3) p

opul

atio

n pe

r sq

uare

mile

.; (4

) pe

rcen

tage

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r ag

e 25

with

bac

helo

rs d

egre

e; (

5) m

edia

n ho

useh

old

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me

in d

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rs;

(6)

perc

enta

ge o

f fam

ilies

bel

ow p

over

ty li

ne; (

7) k

now

n cr

ime

s pe

r 10

0,00

0 po

pula

tion.

; (8)

per

cent

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ofow

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pied

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sing

; (+

) =

inno

vativ

e ap

plic

atio

ns o

f com

bine

d in

dica

tors

.

Pro

file

data

is ta

ken

from

U

S C

en

sus

Co

un

ty a

nd

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Da

ta B

oo

k, 1

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4, u

nles

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rmat

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for

this

cha

rt w

as c

ompi

led

wit

h th

e ge

nero

us a

ssis

tanc

e of

Jaso

n V

enet

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, Jun

e G

in, a

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und

ay O

bazu

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PL

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me

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erty

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me

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rs(8

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gon

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arks

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(P

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and

data

in

pare

nthe

ses)

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1741

277

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1,56

7(4

45,4

58)

12.9

%(2

1%)

31(3

752)

20.6

%(2

5.9%

)$2

7,25

0($

29,5

92)

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(9.7

%)

5,75

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(53%

)

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aden

a, C

AQ

uali

ty o

f L

ife

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x 19

90L

395

295

-13

2,60

512

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5765

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146

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, AX

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cato

rs o

f Q

uali

ty o

f L

ife

1996

L18

311

22

1,01

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028

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2411

19.9

%$2

9,29

110

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9,95

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rce

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nty,

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lity

of

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e B

ench

mar

k P

roje

ct 1

995

C30

2331

26-

619,

648

27.6

%37

017

.5%

$13,

439

8.7%

6,98

160

.3%

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tlan

d- M

ulno

mah

Cou

nty,

OR

P-M

Cnt

y B

ench

mar

ks 1

994

C85

477

22

600,

811

6.8%

1380

23.7

%$1

4,46

28.

9%9,

697

55.3

%

Pue

blo,

CO

Hea

lthy

Pue

blo:

Com

m I

ndic

ator

sL

243

174

-98

,552

-3.1

%27

4513

.8%

$20,

501

8%7,

775

64.8

%

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Fra

ncis

co, C

ASu

stai

nabl

e SF

199

3L

650

380

120

6981

+72

8,29

17.

8%15

,609

35%

$33,

414

9.7%

9,38

434

.5%

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Jos

e, C

ASa

n Jo

se I

ndic

ator

s 19

95L

1613

11

180

1,33

17.

4%4,

678

25.3

%$4

6,20

66.

5%5,

364

61.3

%

San

Mat

eo, C

AIn

dica

tors

Pro

ject

199

2C

299

153

286

,538

11.5

%7,

093

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%$4

2,89

43.

9%4,

557

53.2

%

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ta M

onic

a, C

ASu

stai

nabl

e C

ity

Pro

gram

199

4L

1813

41

+87

,064

-1.4

%10

,490

43.4

%$3

5,99

715.

7%11

,720

62.2

%

Sea

ttle

, WA

Sust

aina

ble

Seat

tle

1990

R40

1419

61

519,

918

5.2%

6,19

337

.9%

$29,

358

8.4%

12,2

4848

.9%

Sil

icon

Val

ley,

CA

Join

t V

entu

re I

ndex

199

2R

367

1514

-80

1,33

1*27

.3%

4,67

825

.3%

$46,

206

6.5%

5,36

461

.3%

Sie

rra

Nev

ada

Wea

lth

Inde

xR

4615

1714

-42

,839

*33

.8%

299

16.3

%$3

1,57

05.

6%n/

a60

.3%

Wil

lapa

Bay

, WA

Indi

cato

rs f

or a

Sus

tain

able

Com

m 1

995

R42

148

20+

19,3

52*

13.3

%20

11.3

%$1

0,95

217

.2%

3,96

571

.9%

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS

We leave footprints when we walk in the snow, on sand, and acrosswet, muddy, or soft surfaces. Less visible, but much more important,are the ecological footprints we leave when our activities alter theenvironment.

Because of increasing consumption, pollution, and population growth,human beings are leaving bigger and bigger “footprints” on the planet.Footprints are environmental impact zones, measured as land andwater area that is used to support human lifestyles and developmentactivities. As our appetite for resources grows, along with our need forlandfills and other waste “sinks” (places to absorb waste and pollu-tion), our footprints also grow. An expanding footprint signals thatmore and more areas of our natural environment are being sacrificedto provide for human needs and wants.

Footprint Analysis was developed by William Rees and MathisWackernagel as an indicator of the combined ecological effects of percapita consumption and population growth. An ecological footprintmeasures how much of nature’s carrying capacity we use to feed,house, clothe, and otherwise maintain ourselves. Footprint analysisstarts with the simple observation that all consumption of energy andmaterials, and all discharge of wastes, require a finite amount of landor water area for resource production and waste disposal. This area canbe estimated for a community, nation, or individual household usinginformation about how much food, energy, water, and other resourcesare used by a given population, and how much of that is turned intowaste that ends up on land or in the water.

Footprints represent the appropriated carrying capacity of the planetneeded to support a particular lifestyle. They are measured as the areaof productive land and water required for a given population to existat a given consumption level. Footprint analysis divides productiveland and water into six categories: arable, pasture, energy-related,forested, sea area, and built-up (developed). For example, whensomeone drives to a hamburger stand for dinner, they are using energylands for fossil fuel extraction; forest land to absorb (sequester) theCO2 their vehicle emits; arable land for the lettuce, tomatoes, andbread they eat; large areas of pasture land to raise the beef (and arableland to raise grain to feed cattle); more forest land to package theirburger, fries, and drink; and built-up land in the form of paved roads,parking lots, and building sites that is set aside for the physicaldevelopment of fast-food outlets.

Footprints are always bigger than the land physically occupied by thepeople who make them. The collective footprint of the 9.5 millionpeople of sprawling Los Angeles County is at least 40 times largerthan the county itself—larger than the entire land area of California.

Ecological Footprint:a measure of the loadplaced on the biosphereby a given population.Footprints are propor-tional to a community’scombined population andper capita consumptionlevels. They are calculatedin terms of the area ofland and water appropri-ated for energy and re-source consumption, andfor waste disposal.


For Further Reading:Mathis Wackernagel andWilliam Rees, Our Eco-logical Footprint: Reduc-ing Human Impact on theEarth (Philadelphia, PA:New Society Publishers,1996).

London’s footprint has been estimated to be more than 120 times largerthan the metropolitan area. Vancourver, B.C. appropriates a land areamore than 170 times larger than the city's surface area. The averagefootprint of an American is about 25 acres, while the footprint ofsomeone from Mexico will be about one-fourth that size.

Modified versions of the ecological footprint are being developed formeasuring particular sources or types of impacts. One variation couldbe called the hoofprint—the appropriated carrying capacity requiredfor beef consumption. Ecological hoofprints are much larger thanother food-related footprints. It takes approximately 600 gallons ofwater and 1.25 pounds of grain to produce a quarter pound of beef.Each pound of pasture-fed beef that is consumed requires about 1.6acres of grazing and energy land area. For grain-fed beef, the arableland requirements and associated energy land areas are greater. Notcaptured in the hoofprint calculation are factors such as the top soileroded by cattle ranching, the energy for cooking the beef, and themethane emissions—powerful greenhouse gases—generated by cattle.

Another variation is the carbon footprint, which is based largely onconsumption of fossil fuels. For example, when driving a car or truck,each gallon of gasoline burned forms about 20 pounds of carbondioxide as exhaust. Depending on fuel efficiency and miles traveled,a gasoline-powered vehicle can easily generate its own weight incarbon dioxide each year.

As an exercise in footprint analysis, you can calculate your ownhousehold carbon footprint using the worksheet on the following page.


FOOTPRINTS:" An area-based estimateof the [global] naturalcapital requirements ofany defined population."

—Rees and Wackernagel

FINGERPRINTS:Fingerprints measure theportion of productive landand water area that isappropriated by a givenpopulation for purposes oftrade, investment, orspeculation rather thandirect consumption. Itaccounts for trans-boundary capital flowsfrom one population thatinduce added con-sumption and wastegeneration in another.

FOGHORNS &CANARIES:

Critical load indicators,early warning systems,and sentinel species thatalert us to ecologicalsystems that may beoverstressed or on theverge of collapse.

COMPARISON OF ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTSFor Selected Countries

Country 1997 Population Footprint Deficit* (in millions) (acres/person) (acres/person)

Bangladesh 126 1 0.5Brazil 167 8 (+9)Canada 30 19 (+5)China 1,250 3 1Germany 82 13 8India 970 2 1Japan 126 11 6Mexico 97 6 3Nigeria 118 4 2Russian Federation 146 15 6United States 268 25 9

World 5,850 7 2

*Amount by which footprint exceeds locally available productive land and water area.Numbers in parentheses (+) indicate presently unused ecological capacity inside borders.Source: Wackernagel et al., Ecological Footprint of Nations, 1997.

CARBON FOOTPRINTAs an exercise in footprint analysis, you can calculate your own household carbon footprint — the area of landneeded to grow additional trees to “sequester” (absorb) the carbon you produce this year. The worksheetproduced below is derived from American Forests “Carbon Debt Calculator."

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CALCULATING CARBON FOOTPRINT:Estimate your annual emissions in pounds by using the multipliers presented below. If estimating for a typical week, multiply by52 (or one month X 12). Add up your total pounds of emissions, then divide by 16,000 to get your footprint in acres.

Since tree density and sequestration rates vary greatly, figure an average of 3 healthy trees added to one-eighth acre to offset theemissions of each ton (2,000 lbs.) of carbon dioxide. In other words, assume that 1 acre with 24 trees offsets 8 tons of annualemissions. If planted as dense forest, the acreage required would obviously be much smaller than if planted in suburban residentialareas. Remember, trees provide only temporary storage of carbon, since they give back much of the carbon to the atmosphere whenthey are burned or allowed to decay.

To compute personal gasoline consumption, you may find it easier to divide the total number of miles you drive each year by yourvehicle's average fuel economy (miles per gallon). Note that use of a car air conditioner may add thousands of pounds to youremissions total. For home energy consumption, use your monthly utility bills. Note that your electricity may be generated by energysources with little or no carbon content (e.g., hydropower). The emissions factor used in this worksheet is an average. For estimatingtrash and recycling, assume about 7 lbs. per standard grocery bag, 13 lbs. for a 10-gallon container, and 40 lbs. for a large trash bag.

ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD TRAVEL BEHAVIOR

Gasoline consumption ❑ gallons X 19.5 lbs. per gallon = _________

City bus ❑ miles X 0.7 lbs. per mile = _________

Intercity bus travel ❑ miles X 0.2 lbs. per mile = _________

Subway or train ❑ miles X 0.6 lbs. per mile = _________

Taxi ❑ miles X 1.5 lbs. per mile = _________

ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD ENERGY USE

Electricity ❑ killowatt-hours X 1.5 lbs. per kWh = _________

Natural Gas ❑ therms X 11 lbs. per therm = _________

Oil ❑ gallons X 22 lbs. per gallon = _________

Propane, bottled gas ❑ gallons X 13 lbs. per gallon = _________

ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD SOLID WASTE

Trash ❑ pounds X 3 lbs. CO2 per pound = _________

Recycled solid waste ❑ pounds X 2 lbs. CO2 per pound = _________

TOTAL ___________

Divide total pounds by 16,000 to get carbon footprint in acres:



Sustainable CommunitiesGOALS TO GUIDE ACTION

Þ Community-based regionalismß A strong sense of trust and reciprocal obligation among residentsà An ethic of stewardship on behalf of future generationsÞ Democratic participation and informed deliberationß Growth management based on social and environmental carrying capacityß Prices that reflect full social and environmental costs of goods and servicesà Equity mitigation measures that reduce the regressive impacts of honest pricingÞ A commitment to social justice, tempered by humility in defining itß Economic security that balances local self-reliance with global interdependenceà Design that enhances adaptability, livability, and access to nature & public spaceÞ Educational reform that promotes constructive critical thinking & glocal learningß Institutional reform that promotes equality in the competition of ideas

Selected ReferencesBrundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford UniversityPress. Campbell, Scott. 1996. “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?—Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Develop-ment.” Journal of the American Planning Association 62,3: 296-311. City of Santa Monica, Sustainable City Progress Report (December1996). Cohen, Joel. 1995. How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: W.W. Norton. Common, Michael. 1995. Sustainabilityand Policy: Limits to Economics. Cambridge University Press. Downs, Anthony. 1994. New Visions for Metropolitan America. The BrookingsInstitution and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Engwicht, David. 1993. Reclaiming Our Cities and Towns: Better Living With Less Traffic.Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Hart, Stuart L. 1997. “Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World,” Harvard BusinessReview 75,1 (January-February). Hawken, Paul. 1993. The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York, NY: HarperBusiness. Hempel, Lamont C. 1996. Environmental Governance: The Global Challenge. Washington, DC: Island Press. Ophuls, William.1996. “Unsustainable Liberty, Sustainable Freedom.” In Building Sustainable Societies: A Blueprint for a Post-Industrial World. DennisPirages, ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Orfield, Myron. 1997. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability. Washington,DC: Brookings Institution/Cambridge: Lincoln Land Institute. Pirages, Dennis. 1996. Building Sustainable Societies: A Blueprint for a Post-Industrial World. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Platt, Rutherford H., Rowan A. Rowntree, Pamela C. Muick. eds. 1996. The Ecological City:Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity. Amerst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. President’s Council on SustainableDevelopment. 1996. Sustainable America: A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity, and a Healthy Environment for the Future.Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of SocialCapital in America.” PS: Political Science and Politics (December): 664-683. Rees, William E. 1990. “Economics, Ecology and the Roleof Environmental Assessment in Achieving Sustainable Development.” In Jacobs, P. and Sadler, B., eds., Sustainable Development andEnvironmental Assessment: Perspectives on Planning for a Common Future. Ottawa: CEARC-FEARO. Register, Richard. 1987. Eco-CityBerkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Roodman, David. 1996. “Paying the Piper” WorldwatchPaper 133. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute (December). Roseland, Mark. 1994. “Sustainable Communities: An Examination of theLiterature.” In Sustainable Communities Resource Package. Toronto: Ontario Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (April 1995).Serageldin, Ismail. 1995. “Sustainability and the Wealth of Nations: First Steps in an Ongoing Journey (Draft).” Paper presented at the ThirdAnnual World Bank Conference on Environmentally Sustainable Development. Washington, DC. Treanor, Paul. 1996. “Why Sustainabilityis Wrong.” Electronic publication avaliable at webinter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/sustainability.html. Urban Sustainability Learning Group.1996. Staying in the Game: Exploring Options for Urban Sustainability. A Project of the Tides Foundation. Available from the Center forNeighborhood Technology, Chicago, IL.Van der Ryn, Sym and Peter Calthorpe. 1986. Sustainable Communities: A New Design Synthesisfor Cities, Suburbs and Towns. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Wackernagel, Mathis, and William Rees. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint:Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.

The future is not some place we aregoing to but one we are creating. Thepaths to it are not found but made,and the activity of making themchanges both the maker and thedestination.

− − − − − John Schaar

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