Sustainable Communities

One of the greatest stresses on our planet is our population. If we acted the way we do in a much less populated world we wouldn’t be doing so much damage to the environment, therefore we wouldn’t have to be worrying so much about sustainability. As it turns out there over 6.6 billion of us and counting, so we are now in the position of having to address sustainability, being that modern civilization is at stake. The funny thing is that as our world has progressed exponentially over the past several decades, yet we have exercised very little foresight in regards to sustainability. Most of the dire issues we’re now forced to address are the result of our own carelessness.

That being said, I chose to look into sustainable communities. Communities are one of the most intimate hubs of human interaction. With the advent of the automobile following WWII, we Americans were set loose to explore outside our condensed communities that had for centuries past been the place of almost all our daily activities. We were freed to move far away, commute, and seek goods and services previously too far to reach. With that great freedom has come even greater costs.

Believe it or not, two-thirds of the land in cities that have developed in the era of the automobile is devoted to the moving, parking and servicing of cars. Since the beginning, we humans have been accustomed to tribes, villages, towns and other concentrated areas of living in which we interact closely with others. Now that we can drive to where we need to go, the places we would have otherwise found in our local communities are now spread out over much larger areas, meaning that walking has become nearly obsolete. We have transformed countless acres into roads, strip malls and housing developments, whereas we could have been building communities in which most of an individuals basic needs are available by walking, biking, or public transportation. Exacerbating the situation is legislation that taxes gas for the purpose of building new roads, which only further encourages urban sprawl in a self-sustaining cycle.

Urban sprawl is the result of more cars, more roads and inadequate zoning and planning. The way it’s worked is that individuals buy land around cities, build shopping centers and housing developments, and the cities scurry to accommodate the necessary infrastructure and utilities. This pattern, left unchecked, has resulted in urban sprawl. The governments of Oregon and Japan have taken initiatives to mandate development boundaries so that developers and individuals contribute more to their localized communities. When this happens, retail stores, markets, and housing are increasingly concentrated, which results in the conservation of land, resources and the environment.

The greatest travesty of urban sprawl is the waste of land. Proper planning can result in cities in which individuals don’t need to drive. The consolidation of cities within smaller areas saves the surrounding land, reduces pollution, and fosters more intimate interactions betweens us and our communities. Most cities are over double the size the would otherwise be if they were based on consolidated communities in which individuals were encouraged to walk or take public transportation.

Wikipedia defines sustainable communities as the following: communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. They tend to focus on environmental sustainability (including development and agriculture) and economic sustainability. Sustainable communities can focus on sustainable urban infrastructure and/or sustainable municipal infrastructure.

Efforts are being made to address this problem. The Sustainable Cities Program (SCP) is a joint facility of the U.N. Environmental Program and the U.N. Human Settlements Program that is designed to foster the planning and management needed to move cities in the developing world toward sustainability. The problems inherent with unsustainable communities are far worse in developing nations where two-thirds of the populations live in cities. The lack of resources and services in such cities means that not only their inhabitants have poor living conditions, but the environmental degradation surrounding them is very serious.

The resources needed to plan sustainable communities are becoming more available. Websites like sustcomm.com, sustainable.org and smartcommunities.ncat.org provide the tools necessary for cities, developers, or anyone to properly plan communities that are more livable and less of a burden on the environment. In my environmental science text book sustainable communities are rated largely by “livability”. Livable cities maintain a high population density, preserve heterogeneity of residences, businesses, stores and shops, and keep layouts on a “human dimension” so that people can visit, conduct business, or take a walk all in a functional open area. In contrast, actual cities are built with the focus on accommodating traffic, which divides communities and discourages pedestrian traffic.

As we move forward and our population increases, we will further degrade our environment and create a world in which surviving period will be a higher priority than living in a “livable” community. Capitalism, consumerism and materialism draw us further and further from the natural world which quite precariously affords our survival. The faster we address the issues of sustainability the fewer sacrifices we’ll have to make. Just as important as conservation and environmental stewardship, sustainable communities are places where we can live more holistic, fulfilling lives. Our culture has become less family oriented, where many of the things we’re encouraged to do offer no true value. Sustainable communities are like human sanctuaries; they’re where we belong. If we don’t move toward a world in which we reside in them, future generations may face a world without them.