Why Should Municipalities Think About Sustainability?
October 17, 2011
by Sarah James
The following is a preview of one of the topics to be covered during Leadership Training Institute seminars at the Congress of Cities and Exposition in Phoenix.
Communities — towns and cities — are increasingly experiencing unsustainable trends, such as:
- Escalating energy costs
- Escalating solid waste disposal costs
- A diminishing supply of land
- Increasing scarcity and contamination of water
- Ever-increasing traffic congestion
- Increasing demand for services coupled with decreasing willingness to pay higher taxes
- Increasingly costly compliance with environmental regulations
These local trends reflect national and global trends that also are unsustainable — natural systems that are deteriorating faster than they can be renewed, while consumption and population are rising exponentially and disproportionately.
Well-intentioned local efforts to combat these trends have mostly occurred through separately designed, piecemeal solutions. Due to this approach, one solution often creates a new, unintended problem, or results in conflicting policies and procedures within the same municipality.
For example, some communities that have attempted to manage growth and preserve open space without provision for housing affordability have found themselves bereft of places for local workers, teachers and their own grown children who wish to remain in the community to live. One branch of local government adopts safer, chemical-reducing practices to control insects and weeds on school playing fields and parks, while another local agency sprays the entire community with pesticides in an effort to ward off the West Nile virus.
What’s a Way Out? What’s needed, as some see it, is a different set of “playing rules” — one that is aimed in a healthier, more sustainable direction. A sports team is composed of players, each of whom has a different role and responsibility in their game. They are able to function as a unit because they share a common understanding of the rules that guide how the game is played.
Without that understanding, there would be conflict and chaos, instead of a winning team. When new playing rules — such as the American Planning Association’s (APA) sustainability objectives — are used to collectively shape the broad range of decisions, policies and actions in local government, the result is a comprehensive, integrated systems approach to sustainable practices.
Taking the Systems Approach Eco-municipalities use a systems approach involving widespread awareness-raising among municipal employees and the larger community and integrated municipal involvement in strategy development toward sustainable practices, using principles such as such as the four APA sustainability objectives as a common language among all sectors of government and the larger community.
Municipal departments, citizens, businesses and institutions of the community develop and put into practice sustainable strategies and actions that are both appropriate for their own context, and also work toward common objectives. Their high success rate largely comes from broad-based involvement and shared playing rules about what success in sustainability means.
Sarah James, city and town planner, and co-author of The American Planning Association’s Planning for Sustainability Policy Guide
(April, 2000), has worked with U.S. municipalities for more than 15 years. She will lead the Leadership Training Institute seminar L11 entitled, “Mainstreaming Green Practices Throughout Your Local Community” on Thursday, November 10, 2011 from 9:00 a.m. to noon. For more information or to register for Leadership Training Institute seminars visit the NLC homepage at www.nlc.org.