Title: GEOG 4330 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PUAD 6806 POLICY DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
1GEOG 4330 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTPUAD
6806POLICY DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
- Michael D. Lee Ph.D.
- Dept. Geography Environmental Studies
2CLASS 5Sustainable Communities
- Michael D. Lee Ph.D.
- Dept. Geography Environmental Studies
3Communities a key scale
- In 1996, the Presidents Council on Sustainable
Development published a blueprint for achieving
national sustainability. - Goal 6 stated that America should. encourage
people to work together to create healthy
communities where natural and historic resources
are preserved, jobs are available, sprawl is
contained, neighborhoods are secure, education is
lifelong, transportation and health care are
accessible, and all citizens have opportunities
to improve the quality of their lives
4Community? Sustainability?
- Definition A Community - a group of people
residing in the same locality and under the same
government, or - Definition B Community - a group of people
having common interests. - Sustainable community A B?
- Sense of community - a feeling of belonging
(place), of participation, of shared experience,
of common interests, of shared goals. - Sustainable community - residents and other
stakeholders who share a sense of community and
who are working together for their common good
and the good of the next generation(s).
5Oh-oh! We have a disconnection
- Sustainable communities are built on sense of
belonging and a contribution to the collective
good by members and interested stakeholders. - According to Robert D. Putnam of Harvard,
Americans are becoming disconnected from each
other by avoiding organizations, civic
involvement and even social interactions (Bowling
Alone, 2000). - Putnam says this represents a decline in social
capital that has bad consequences for
neighborhoods, child welfare, health and
democratic institutions among other things. - What causes such disconnection?
6Defining sustainable community
- Northwest Policy Institute defined sustainable
communities as follows "Sustainable communities
foster commitment to place, promote vitality,
build resilience to stress, act as stewards, and
forge connections beyond the community. - For many, achieving a sustainable community
requires understanding the connections between
and achieving balance among the social, economic,
and environmental pieces of that community.
7EUs sustainability model
Environment Preserving the ecosystem and its
service functions
Futurity Actions that dont cheat on the next
generations
F
E
Public Participation Individuals have the
ability to influence decisions
Equity Providing equal access to resources
E
P
Modified from Deakin et al, 2002
8The four corners
- Environment
- Does urbanization consume resources?
- Does urbanization produce pollution?
- Is development reducing biodiversity and
ecosystem services?
- Equity
- Do all individuals have access to resources,
transport, utilities, jobs, etc.? - Are citizens safe, secure, healthy?
- Is cultural heritage preserved?
- Participation
- Does governance reflect community values and
perspectives? - Do urban settlement patterns promote justice?
- Futurity
- Are time scales appropriate to capture
longer-term costs and benefits? - Does planning adequately link the short (lt5),
medium (5-20) and long time scales (gt20)
9What does it mean?
- Sustainability is related to the quality of life
in a community - whether the economic, social and
environmental systems that make up the community
are providing a healthy, productive, meaningful
life for all community residents, present and
future. - How has a community been changing economically?
- How has a community been changing socially?
- How has a community been changing
environmentally? - What linkages exist between these three sets of
changes? - How does it what to change in the future?
10The Triad of Community Sustainability
- When society, economy and environment are viewed
as separate, unrelated parts of a community, the
community's problems are also viewed as isolated
issues. - Economic development councils try to create more
jobs. - Social needs are addressed by health care
services and housing authorities. - Environmental agencies try to prevent and correct
pollution problems. - Each part of the triad needs to be developed in
conjunction with the other to take advantage of
positive synergies and eliminate negative ones.
11Unbalanced Actions
- A piecemeal approach can have a number of bad
side-effects - Solutions to one problem can make another problem
worse, e.g. creating affordable housing is a good
thing, but when that housing is built in areas
far from workplaces, the result is increased
traffic/stress and the pollution that comes with
it. - Piecemeal solutions tend to create opposing
groups and views. e.g. If the environmentalists
win, the economy will suffer, and If business
has its way, the environment will be destroyed. - Instead, sustainable communities need consensus
and shared visions.
12Importance of community-level SD
- Individual sustainability efforts may be thwarted
by ineffective communal decision-making and
institutional responsiveness - e.g. a desire by more people to take public
transport is thwarted by increased road
construction by counties or cheap parking in
cities that keeps too high a on the road. - e.g. a desire to reduce the waste of natural
resources is thwarted by a lack of recycling
programs for reusable materials.
13Creating a Sustainable Community
- The most successful sustainable community
projects all seem to have three characteristics
in common - First, the community created a vision of its
future that balances economic, environmental and
social needs. The community viewed its future in
the long term not on the order of years, but on
the order of decades or generations. - Second, the vision incorporated the views of a
wide cross-section of the community. - Third, the community figured out how to keep
track of its progress in reaching that vision.
14Practicalities
- It is important that the community itself become
involved in the project. - A sustainable community needs to be developed by
the people who make up the community - it cannot
be designed by a consultant or taken off the
shelf. - It cannot be implemented by experts hired
specifically for the project - it needs to be
implemented every day by the people who live and
work in the community. - Discovering the needs of the community and
finding ways to meet those needs is not difficult
but it does require some effort. It begins by
deciding what the sustainable community would
look like. - This can be very site-specific.
15Keeping on track
- Just as important as knowing what a community
wants to become is knowing how to reach that
goal. - Communities need ways to tell whether the
decisions they make are increasing or decreasing
their overall communal health. - Indicators of community sustainability provide a
practical way to measure progress toward
sustainable communities. - Indicators measure whether a community is getting
better or worse at providing all its members with
a productive, enjoyable life, both now and in the
future.
16QOL Indicators
- One of the biggest benefits of SDI/QOL indicators
is that they can be used in conjunction with
policy changes to see if measurable impacts are
occurring in the direction the policy is designed
to achieve from actions the policy is designed to
bring about. - e.g. if there is a policy to increase the use of
public transport in a community, then an
indicator would be the level of ridership on
buses as a percentage of commuters, the actions
that the policy would bring about might be to
offer more convenient service on new hydrogen
fueled buses (to be consistent with other
policies about air quality and asthma levels),
and the signal that things are becoming more
sustainable would be a measured increase in the
percentage ridership over previous levels.
17Sustainable Seattle
- One of the most oft-quoted initiatives in
sustainable community development is Seattle. - Seattle began by selecting SD indicators
sensitive to decision-making concerns, choosing
those - that would change.
- that offered personal (per capita) dimensions
- that showed clear direction toward/away from
sustainability - with observable and explainable linkages to other
indicators - that were agreeable to a broad base of 190 civic
leaders, key individuals from many sectors the
public. - Note that a number of observers have seen the
Seattle initiative stagnate and fail to fulfill
early expectations.
18Key themes
- Sustainability through building design.
- Building choices commit us to decades, if not
hundreds of years of resource consumption
economic and environmental performance of
buildings is thus very important. - Sustainability through spatial planning.
- Community layout, zoning, transportation system,
and other spatial decisions are important for
both engendering a sense of community/place and
efficiency in resource consumption.
19Key themes
- Sustainability through greater local control and
resource flows - Communities can often determine whether the
resources on which the quality of life of
citizens depend are generated locally or must
come from off-site sources e.g. whether there
is still green belt and farming around the
community or whether urban growth is allowed to
swallow this up, whether local watersheds produce
sufficient high quality water or suffer
degradation, whether investments are made in
solar power or bioenergy using community waste or
the community must use fossil fuels, etc. - Sustainability through load management.
- Communities are calculating their ecological
footprints and other awareness-raising indices to
judge themselves.
20Key themes
- Sustainability through promoting citizens
adoption of sustainable lifestyles and ethics. - Communities, through education, public service
provision, tax structures, local ordinances and
so forth can either encourage/facilitate or
discourage/inhibit the adoption of sustainable
lifestyles. - Sustainability through setting trends and forcing
change - Communities, through their collective spending of
taxpayers contributions, can exercise
considerable influence in the market place
decisions to go green with buildings and public
services, invest in socially responsible ways
(pension funds,etc.), pass particular bond
measures requiring public officials to implement
particular measures.
21Key themes
- Sustainability through attracting and
encouraging/requiring sustainable businesses and
business practices - Communities are the residing places of businesses
who offer employment to local residents and are
also responsible for local and more broader scale
flows of inputs (e.g. energy) and outputs (e.g.
pollution) with local to global impacts. - By requiring that businesses meet more stringent
operating practices or by offering special
subsidies or other incentives to locate in the
community if practicing sustainability measures
(like eco-effectiveness), a significant
contribution can be made. - Clearly natural synergies and mutual
reinforcements exist which should be maximized.
22Town planning for sustainability
- Town planning, urban and regional planning,
master planning ..whatever local planning is
called, it is key to achieving sustainable
development. - This process generally regulates land use, adopts
medium to long time scales, encourages/requires
public viewpoints, has implicit environmental
impact considerations and fosters/requires
sectoral integration (regionalism). - Mainstream planning doctrines are now leaning
toward sustainable settlements, cities, etc. - Key elements include higher densities, reduced
car dependency, integration of transport and
development (esp. at nodes), reduced dispersal of
paired functions (e.g. home and work), more
effective sequent occupancy (brownfield
rehabilitation and reuse), integrated energy
planning (e.g. power gen. and heating),
preservation and enhancement of greenspace as
amenities and community assets, etc.
23Planning and sustainability
- Manta and Berke (1998) provide a very useful
summary table of how planning relates to
sustainable development in terms of how
communities develop and how they are changed by
decisions with respect to what takes place and
what gets built and where? - Their six principles of sustainable development
articulated from the city planners perspective
are - Work in harmony with nature
- Create livable built environments
- Achieve a place-based economy
- Create equityM
- Make polluters pay
- Practice responsible regionalism
24Some questions we must ask.
- What does or should a local economy attempt to do
for its citizens? - What sorts of local actions really contribute to
personal satisfaction? - What sorts of local actions detract from
satisfaction and well-being? - What costs as well as benefits do growth and
expansion impose? - How can the role and value of the specific and
unique community resources (water bodies, open
space, surrounding agricultural land, geographic
features, etc.) to the community be assessed? - What factors really contribute to the
satisfaction of a sense of community and
life-enhancing inter-relationships? (adapted from
Beaton Maser 1999)
25Recipe for community sustainability
- Each person contributing to the enhancement of
the community needs to get a return equal to or
greater than his/her contribution. - Forces for positive change must be greater than,
and at least equal to, the forces for negative
change, especially when they are directly opposed
(e.g. rehabilitation v. vandalism). - What can begin (and usually does) as a minority
of active contributors must gradually change into
a majority for each given aspect of community
enhancement. - The number of free-riders that reap benefits but
make little contribution must diminish over time.
26Potential roadblock
- Yanarella (1999) states that sustainable
community programs envision a pathway moving
toward greater sustainability i.e. away from
unsustainability -and pick indicators that try
and capture this. - However, they merely promote measures that
undertake the technically easiest, economically
least expensive and politically most palatable
changes. - While readily acceptable like motherhood and
apple pie, later will likely come a set of
insurmountable political, social, and economic
obstacles. - Future measures will have higher incremental
financial costs for actions, lower economic
dividends, and greater political resistance.