What are sustainable communities?

There are many ways to define sustainability. The simplest definition is: A sustainable society is one that can persist over generations, one that is farseeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social systems of support.  

In the mid 1980's, after more than half a century of focusing single-mindedly on economic growth as a means to improving humanity's condition, the international community began to realize that economic development is useless if it undermines its natural and social foundations. Because unrestricted economic development pollutes the world's air, water, and soil, decimates forest and natural resources, creates toxic wastes and overflowing landfills, then we must examine other options. The interest in sustainability arose out of a desire to increase quality of life and opportunities that economic development can bring, yet find ways to do it that preserve the environment for present and future generations. After all, what good are jobs and a strong economy if we do not have a habitable planet to put them on? 

Sustainability has resonated with communities across the country facing the same predicament. Many communities are finding that conventional approaches to economic development, transportation planning and development of the built environment -- efforts that are intended to increase residents' opportunities and quality of life -- are in fact creating a variety of negatives that we would prefer to do without: congestion, sprawl, air pollution, overflowing landfills, resource stress and other environmental and social problems. Citizens are finding that if we continue with the same approaches that created these problems, we will further degrade of our own quality of life and have increasingly insurmountable environmental problems for future generations. Sustainable development is a far-reaching approach to repair and avoid these problems. Sustainability is an ongoing process and something to strive for, rather than a static set of characteristics. 

Communities around the country are demonstrating that it is indeed possible to increase economic and community well-being in ways that promote a healthy environment. Community successes can be summarized by six basic strategies for sustainable economic development. 

1. Use resources efficiently to make your community thrive. 

Resource efficiency is an essential foundation of sustainability. Communities can significantly reduce environmental impacts and improve the economy by using energy, water and materials more efficiently, and by using better manufacturing techniques that cut pollution, waste and production costs. 

Current U.S. energy use demonstrates the enormous potential presented by resource efficiency. Our national energy bill in 1994 was $490 billion -- several billion dollars more than the federal budget deficit. We can easily reduce current energy use by a third with existing cost-effective technologies. Japan and Western European countries already have -- they use one half of the energy we do for each unit of produce. Energy efficiency is one of the most direct ways to address air pollution, acid rain, smog, climate change, oil spills, scarred landscapes and all the other environmental harms associated with the production and consumption of energy. 

When households, businesses and local governments implement resource efficiency improvements, they free up money for other purposes. It is the responding of this saved money that generates significant community economic advantages from resource efficiency. Think of the businesses and operations in your community. Imagine the environmental and economic results if grocery stores, office buildings, industries, schools, restaurants and public operations all curbed resource use by an easy 20%, and then went on to cut other operation costs through waste reduction, recycling and pollution prevention. 

2. Meet local needs by using local resources effectively.

Effectively using local natural, social, and financial resources to meet local needs reduces environmental harms and creates a resilient, sustainable community. 

For example, our current food system is energy, water and pesticide intensive, enormously dependent on expensive inputs, and responsible for massive losses of topsoil. One of the environmental costs of our current food system is its scale, and the amount of energy required simply to transport food from to soil to table. Some communities are finding ways to address the environmental harms of our food system by reconnecting with local agriculture, resulting in fresh, tasty, regionally distinctive foods for residents and restaurants, creating local jobs and a better place to live. 

Every community has a variety of other basic needs that could be met with local or regional resources. Energy, food, building and manufacturing materials and a variety of consumer goods can be provided with more local resources, creating economic and jobs opportunities, reducing environmental impacts and creating a thriving community as well. 

3. Invest in an efficient, sustainable infrastructure.

Land use, community design, buildings, transportation and water systems usually are not considered part of the economic development picture. However, this infrastructure can create the foundation for long-term economic and environmental well-being or it can be a long-term drain on economic and environmental vitality. 

For example, consider land use patterns, community design and transportation: American families spend a sizable fraction of their income owning and feeding their cars. As a country, Americans in 1990 spent nearly $1 trillion, or about 18% of the GNP for mobility. As a household, this translates into $8,000 $10,000 per year -- a sizable portion of many household incomes. Current transportation patterns are also a major contributor to air pollution, smog, health programs, a large share of U.S. energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. 

These costs could be significantly reduced if we simply designed communities so people had more choices in mobility and access. A study that looked at the household annual auto costs between a pedestrian friendly section of northeast San Francisco and a more car-dependent suburban area found a difference of $13,000 per year per household between the two. That's $13,000 that the households in the pedestrian/transit oriented neighborhood could put to other uses -- or did not have to cam in the first place. 

More and more communities are realizing the economic and environmental costs of sprawl and inefficient community infrastructure and design. New approaches to planning water, energy, transportation, buildings and community systems offer cost-effective, environmentally-sensitive alternatives. By using these sustainable approaches, communities are creating more livable places and the foundation for a strong economy for years to come. 

4. Protect and enhance community quality of life.

While many economists and policy makers used to maintain that the environment and quality of life were something to worry about after we all have food, shelter and other basics, more and more communities are finding that the environment, community character and aesthetics are a basic underpinning of a strong 

economy. Increasingly, quality of life issues such as scenic beauty, environmental quality, crime rates, aesthetics in the built environment, community open space, trees and vegetation, distinctive community character, access to public lands, and so forth, are more important than traditional business factors in business location decisions. 

People and businesses are moving from urban areas to rural areas because they want improved quality of life. Working to make your community an attractive, distinctive place, with clean air and water, access to open space and wilderness is part of sound economic development strategy. Dumps simply don't make good sites for thriving economic activity. 

5. Create new businesses that provide services or products that protect or restore the environment.

Improving the environmental performance of existing operations will create a demand for environmental technologies and services throughout your community, which will directly spur the creation of some jobs. For example, the farsighted energy efficiency and solar programs of Sacramento Municipal Utility District are not only reducing customers' utility bills, but have also created 900 jobs since 1992, pumping $124 million additional dollars into the economy. Water efficiency, waste reduction and pollution prevention can stimulate similar local job gains. 

Communities can also tap the job creation potential of developing and manufacturing the technologies used to implement environmental improvements: efficient lighting fixtures, photovoltaic panels, pollution prevention technologies, fuel cells, and so forth. 

Several countries, Germany and Japan in particular, are using environmental protection and environmental technologies as the foundation for an industrial policy for the next century. Communities can help spur this development in the U.S. by developing eco-industrial parks, environmental business clusters, and other support systems for emerging economic opportunities. 

6. Develop a community business ecosystem.

This strategy in some ways is the ultimate challenge, and is the weaving together of all the preceding strategies. As Paul Hawken writes in The Ecology of Commerce, in order to fundamentally address businesses impact on the environment, we must design our commercial and industrial systems to mimic nature. This means developing a business culture that is so intelligently designed and constructed that it mimics nature at every step. All wastes would have value to other modes of production so that everything is either reclaimed, reused or recycled. 

There are a few preliminary examples of this approach around the country, in which local resources are used by local businesses and then wastes and byproducts from one business are put to use by another, creating a continuous ecological loop. 

Creating Sustainable Communities

While these six strategies do not capture all the multiple aspects of sustainability, they offer essential areas communities can focus on to create jobs and increased economic well-being while protecting and restoring the environment. The community level offers an ideal setting for working on the challenging issue of sustainability. Citizens, business leaders and local governmental officials are finding that they can see tangible successes from community efforts to improve how we approach economic development, community design, resource use, transportation systems and other aspects of sustainability. 

This paper was prepared by Alice Hubbard of the Rocky Mountain Institute.