Sustainability and Communities

“ One can more likely cause an effect at a fine scale, whereas success is more likely to be achieved at a broad scale” – Forman (1995)

“[it is] at the community scale that the application of innovation, both technological and social occurs most effectively, and, when aggregated, has the greatest impact in increasing sustainability” – Dale, Lind, and Newman (2010)

I feel that both of the quotes are correct in what they are saying. It is easy for one person to make a change towards sustainability, however it is more difficult to gain success at a larger scale, such as world wide. It appears that changes towards sustainability are most effective at a community scale. A community can be considered to be a group of people living in a particular area, common ownership, or a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other.

 For example, the city of Curitiba, Brazil, has recreated the development of the urban landscape and created a sustainable city (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html).

Another example of a sustainable community is the Kootenay Grain Community Supported Agriculture program (http://www.kootenaygraincsa.ca/). It is a grain community supported agriculture project. It consists of a group of farmers in the Kootenay Region of BC who work together to create a sustainable grain supply to the region. It is supported by the community by selling shares to consumers, and divvying up the resulting harvested grain crop. The carbon footprint of grain production is greatly reduced, and the farmers are guaranteed a fair income for their crops.

http://www.kootenaygraincsa.ca/images/file/Express20091021.pdf

These are just two examples of how sustainability can be achieved at a community level. They both represent peoples will and success to make a change towards a more sustainable world.