WHY SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY INDICATORS? PEOPLE NEED A REALITY CHECK

Wingspread Journal, Volume 18, Issue 2 Spring 1996

Development of sustainable community indicators can provide a theoretical and practical framework for defining the meaning of a sustainable community and for measuring progress towards that goal. People need a reality check to ensure that incremental steps are moving in desired directions and to hold and be held accountable for choices that individuals and collective entities make.

Sustainable community indicators can enable comparisons among communities, but are most valuable when measuring a community against itself over time. Indicators enable decision-makers and taxpayers to understand how well their investments are working and where changes are needed and desired. Probably the greatest contribution of indicators is that hidden agendas, unanticipated consequences, successful efforts on undesired pathways, and inadequate sensitivity and responsiveness for concerns of all members of a community are revealed and can be addressed.

By analyzing different configurations of community, four characteristics of a sustainable community emerge: economic security, ecological integrity, quality of life, and empowerment with responsibility. Although no community now embodies all aspects of all four characteristics, this definitional framework provides a conceptual goal. The next step is to help people identify indicators to measure progress towards fulfilling this picture of a sustainable community. The four characteristics are the foundation from which indicator pathways are identified. By understanding the pathways of progress, people can—through a community-engagement process—derive appropriate indicators.

THE FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY

Economic Security

A more sustainable community includes a variety of businesses, industries, and institutions which are environmentally sound (in all aspects), financially viable, provide training, education, and other forms of assistance to adjust to future needs, provide jobs and spend money within a community, and enable employees to have a voice in decisions which affect them. A more sustainable community also is one in which residents' money remains in the community.

Ecological Integrity

A more sustainable community is in harmony with natural systems by reducing and converting waste into non-harmful and beneficial purposes, and by utilizing the natural ability of environmental resources for human needs without undermining their ability to function over time.

Quality of Life

A more sustainable community recognizes and supports people's evolving sense of well-being which includes a sense of belonging, a sense of place, a sense of self-worth, a sense of safety, a sense of connection with nature, and provision of goods and services which meet their needs, both as they define them and as can be accommodated within the ecological integrity of natural systems.

Empowerment and Responsibility

A more sustainable community enables people to feel empowered and to take responsibility based on a shared vision, equal opportunity, ability to access expertise and knowledge for their own needs, and a capacity to affect positively the outcome of decisions which affect them.

Excerpted from "Sustainable Community Indicators" by Elizabeth Kline. Used with permission. The Wingspread Journal is the quarterly publication of The Johnson Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 547, Racine, WI 53401-0547; phone: 414-681-3343; fax: 414-681-3325.

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