Key Aspects of Sustainable Communities

a) Communities are dynamic systems where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a community, different components interact in a cyclical way to either enhance or worsen the status of the community. Each component – individuals, organizations, government, and resources – is critical for the overall functioning of a community and is affected by all the other components of such a community. A sustainable community is one that improves the quality of life of its members without diminishing their ability to have a good quality of life over the long-term.

The reason why communities exist is because they are crucial to meeting human needs. Individuals by themselves cannot meet all their needs, which include social, economic, governance, and resource needs. Sustainable communities work as a whole to meet all of the needs of its members and future members.

A sustainable community relies on strong community capacities (economic, environmental, governance, and social) to enhance natural, financial, social, and human capital. Community capacity is the aggregate of assets, which are available in a community to satisfy human needs, such as education, food and shelter, material resources, power, and leisure.

b) The reading about community structure and dynamics is essential to our course because it describes the inclusiveness that we will need to learn as a community. It also explains and provides examples of the way we must look at communities. In order to solve the problems of a community, we have to look at it as a whole rather than try to deal with individual components. This will be especially important with the community projects that are part of the course. In addition, the reading was particularly important to me because it supported my view that we must include all sectors of a community in decision-making and we must learn how to value the assets of communities (particularly environmental and social) if we want to achieve sustainability.

c) I agree that communities are dynamic systems where components affect and are affected by other components within the system. I also agree that for communities to become sustainable, they must be inclusive and they must value assets. However, I am concerned why there isn’t discussion about the barriers that prevent these key aspects of sustainable communities from happening. Why is it that, despite calls from citizens, businesses, and other communities, most cities and communities continue developing unsustainably? Why is it that governance continues to be exclusive and that communities are far from valuing assets? I believe that these are concerns that have to be mentioned in any discussion about making communities sustainable because they are about real barriers that prevent us from moving forward.