THE SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY: WHAT IS IT?

  To advocate a strategy of sustainable development based on sustainable community development is one thing. To define and describe the elements involved in achieving a sustainable community is another matter entirely. For the most part, definitions of sustainable community development parallel the definitions of sustainable development discussed above. The main difference involves the obvious reduction in geographic scope: sustainable community development is local. Consider the following representative definitions of sustainable community development:

Environmentally sustainable urban economic development can be defined as local economic change which contributes to global environmental sustainability, while also enhancing the local natural and constructed urban environment. Sustainable development favours increased local control over development decisions, and such `bottom up' development strategies would require devolution of decision-making authority to the local level. . . (Gibbs, 1994:106-107).

Strong Sustainability has serious implications for urban form, for the material basis of urban life, and for community social relationships that must be expressed as practical measures in planning (Canadian) communities. These measures must emphasize the efficient use of urban space, reducing consumption of material and energy resources, improving administrative and planning processes sensitively with the attendant socioeconomic and ecological complexities . . . sustainable development implies that the use of energy and materials be in balance with such `natural capital' processes as photosynthesis and waste assimilation (Rees, 1990a, b). This in turn implies increasing community and regional self-reliance to reduce dependency on imports...The benefits would be reduced energy budgets, reduced material consumption, and a smaller, more compact urban pattern interspersed with productive areas to collect energy grow crops, and recycle wastes (Van der Ryn and Calthorpe, 1986, p. ix) (Rees and Roseland, 1991:17).

In the process of aggregating human beings into a relatively small area and providing the necessary forum for civic life, the sustainable city serves as a medium for decentralizing and localizing economic production and commerce and thus preserving the social surplus of the local economy for the community's self-sufficiency and self-enhancement. Likewise, a local, decentralized economy organized around soft energy path options, appropriate technology, and reskilled workers establishes the basis for overcoming the historical antagonisms between city and country, economic growth and environmental health. In so doing, the ecological city can serve as a working model whose benefits, lessons, and consequences can radiate outward, touching more and more features of modern society (Yanarella and Levine, 1992b, 305).

Sustainability implies that the use of energy and materials in an urban area be in balance with what the region can supply continuously through natural processes such as photosynthesis, biological decomposition, and the biochemical processes that support life . . . New urban technologies will become less dependent on fossil fuels and rely more on information and a careful integration with biological processes (Van Der Ryn and Calthorpe, 1986: viii).

  These definitions of sustainable community development stress the importance of striking a balance between environmental concerns and development objectives, while simultaneously enhancing local social relationships; sustainable communities not only protect and enhance the environment, they also promote more humane local societies. Although the relationship is not clearly articulated, local control over development decisions appears to be the primary means by which sustainable community development can be achieved. Phrases such as "devolution of decision-making authority to the local level," "increased community self-reliance," and "localizing economic production and commerce" suggest a very active model of community which assumes that communities possess a relatively complete table of social organization, and that the constituent actors, groups, associations, and institutions are not only able to mobilize for collective, long term action, but have engaged this process regularly.

  To assume that communities can and do act is problematic in several respects. First, studies of community activeness have documented serious gaps in local social organization and a dearth of locality-oriented action (Wilkinson, 1991), especially in rural areas. Communities do act, of course, but they typically do so intermittently and primarily in reaction to some perceived crisis (Tilly, 1973; Luloff, 1990; Wilkinson, 1991). Even in communities that can be characterized as active, there tends to be relatively little coordination among actors and actions; different interest groups pursue specific objectives largely in isolation from one another (Bridger, 1992). Second, the available data concerning local economic development efforts - an aspect of community life that will surely play an important role in strategies to create sustainable communities - suggests that leadership, and participation are limited primarily to economic elites whose interest in development often has more to do with private profit than community well-being (Molotch, 1976; Logan and Molotch, 1987). Finally, as Warren (1972) argues, historical developments such as increasing contact with, and reliance on, extra-local institutions and sources of income and employment has eroded local autonomy. With the solidification of this trend, "...the locus of decision-making...often shifts to places outside the community" (Warren, 1972:53). Although decisions, policies, and programs must conform in some respects to community norms and desires, they are frequently formulated outside the community with little regard for local social, economic, or environmental consequences.

  Two consequences flow from increased vertical ties, according to Warren (1972) and other observers (Berry, 1993; Sachs, 1995). First, local communities and their economies have become increasingly enmeshed in a global economic system characterized by extreme capital mobility and the use of places as little more than production sites; when a particularplace no longer proves to be profitable, corporate decision-makers simply transfer operations elsewhere. The dependency and vulnerability fostered by this situation leaves little room for maneuver in times of economic uncertainty.

  The second alleged consequence of increases in vertical ties is a decrease in the importance of the community as a social unit. Here the line of reasoning is that as local communities have been engulfed by the larger society, "...collective sentiments and personal attachment to locality" (Cuba and Hummon, 1993: 114) have weakened. Individualsand organizations are oriented to happenings beyond the local community and less interested and involved in local affairs (Warren, 1972). This trend, according to Meyrowitz (1986), has been exacerbated by technological advances in communications and transportation that allow people to maintain diverse relationships no longer based on residential proximity. Americans, in this view, have lost their sense of place and the social relationships that depended on the common experience of living and working together.

  Taken together, these are powerful arguments, and they suggest that portrayals of the sustainable community in terms of economic self-sufficiency and local decision-making power is little more than a romantic longing for a mythical past (Bender, 1978) that ignores current social and economic conditions. Although this conclusion may be premature, there is a clear need to assess critically the prospects for meaningful grass-roots action. Such an assessment requires, in turn, a realistic conception of the contemporary community. The key question that must be asked is: To what extent have the changes described above undermined local forms of community?

  As a first step, the obvious importance of extra-local ties must be acknowledged. Corporate investment decisions and macro-economic changes have both positive and negative impacts on individual communities. In fact, as globalization of the economy proceeds, the fate of many localities is likely to become even more dependent upon decisions and policies made elsewhere. Nor is there any doubt that technological advances have reduced the social cost of space and made possible "...the easy maintenance of dispersed primary ties" (Wellman, 1979:1206). What is in doubt is whether these factors have destroyed or made irrelevant social interaction among people inhabiting a common territory.

  To date, there is little evidence to suggest that community, as an interactional phenomenon, has been eclipsed by the forces of modernization (Sampson, 1988; Cuba and Hummon, 1993). Indeed, the components that sociologists typically list as essential to community - a locality, a local society, collective actions, and mutual identity - continue to depend on social interaction for their existence. Social interaction is "...a pervasive feature of community life that underlies and gives substance to the ecological, cultural, organizational, and social psychological aspects" (Wilkinson, 1991:2). Although the local community is no longer the self contained, clearly bounded entity it may have been in the distant past, this does not obviate the fact that "people live together in localities...(and) continue to interact with one another daily in the process of conducting the various aspects of their lives" (Wilkinson, 1991:22). In short, for most people, place and place-based relationships are still an important feature of human existence.

  Of course the boundaries of these settlements are vague, and people may spend a substantial portion of their time in localities other than the one in which they reside. Thus, the community does not necessarily coincide with arbitrary, and sometimes artificial, municipal boundaries. Contemporary communities tend to have a regional character with boundaries defined in practical terms by patterns of interaction that cross jurisdictional borders. This means that the search for sociologically meaningful communityboundaries is an inductive task. Analysis might begin at the municipal level, but community boundaries can only be determined by tracing the territorial scope of the "...actions and connections among people" (Wilkinson, 1991:24).

  To define community in terms of social interaction and argue that the local community remains a relevant unit of social organization does not lead directly to a useful definition of the sustainable community or sustainable community development. The loss of local autonomy and lack of community agency noted above are formidable barriers that cannot be dismantled by definitional fiat. However, an interactional conception of community can provide the basis for the design of strategies which strengthen local forms of social organization (Wilkinson, 1991). This is an important starting point because, in the absence of viable communities, the prospects for locally controlled and planned sustainable community development are dim.