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The importance of defining sustainability

Eds. Note: Words like affordable, sustainable and livable are thrown around regularly in conversations about how Seattle should grow. But we want to know what these words actually mean, and how the city can achieve them.

Today, SeattleScape blogger Roger Valdez introduces the topic of sustainability. An upcoming editorial page will offer 50-word definitions of sustainability provided by members of the community, including elected officials, organizers and A/E/C industry players. Bloggers at the DJC blog SeattleScape will also weigh in. We hope you will join in the discussion.

There are as many definitions of sustainability as there are people who care about the issue.  Platitudes about environmental degradation almost always include the word “sustainability” and now it has taken its place alongside meaningless terms like “proactive,” “value added” and “win-win.”

Sustainability gets used interchangeably with words like “green,” “environmentally sensitive” and “green building.” To builders, “sustainable” applies to material. To a salmon advocate it means sound water policy and to someone working on climate change, it means reducing the vehicle miles traveled in our region. The word has become all things to all people.

Seattle even has the Office of Sustainability and Environment, with the laudable but broad goal of collaborating with “city agencies, business groups, nonprofit organizations, and other partners to protect and enhance Seattle’s distinctive environmental quality and livability.”

The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  This language — borrowed from the Iroquois — is comforting, but can it help us make sensible land use policy?

Mithun’s unbuilt Center for Urban Agriculture

It is time to develop a definition of the word that is tied to measurable outcomes. Change begins with measurement. Sustainability is an economic concept, like return on investment. Economies aren’t just about money, but about the relationships between production, distribution and consumption.  Our bodies, our physical environment and our time all have economies.

We can assess sustainability by asking whether something (a project, a plan or a policy) consumes only as much as it can viably produce or less. Our activities should generate long-term profit whether that profit takes the form of excess energy, materials, dollars or other measurable benefits.

Planning, building, eating and living should generate something extra for future use. For example, developable land should not lay fallow and we should replace impermeable surfaces with permeable ones. Some areas should be up-zoned for more housing and others should be depaved for open space and urban farming.

Imagine a city that produces its own food, energy and goods.  This vision of sustainability is possible with a definition, a plan and a system of accountability.

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This entry was posted by Roger Valdez on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Architecture, Engineering, Government, Landmarks, Parks and open space, Planning, Politics, Seattle lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Elizabeth Hardisty

    Dear Roger: This is good to see, and to read. I would love to see, too, some light on the matter of mindset and values. Tho’ the change to ‘sustainability’ is, itself, a considerable shift of perspective and intention, still, more is needed.
    Is not the idea of nature as ours to exploit, of life itself as under our ‘dominion’ in a sense that relegates everything non-human to non-participants, non-feelers, non-valued (except for utility to us)– isn’t this old perspective something we need to outgrow, as well, and leave behind us forever? It may be the keystone of the arch into our new, sustainable future!
    I’ve recently read that the 2012 “end” date associated with the Mayan calendar, scripts the necessity for a mindset of peace and literally cosmic identity, an awareness of being part of the limitless web of Life.
    Perhaps we may arrive at “sustainability” a little more surely, if we re-tool our outlook and values, first. The trip immediately takes on a more pleasant ambiance, too: we will not be working alone.

  • http://www.bloomforcouncil.org David Bloom

    As Roger Valdez deftly points out, the word “sustainability” has many definitions, most of them having to do with the physical environment in which we live, and which we build around ourselves.

    However, there’s another aspect that isn’t often mentioned: the sustainability of our social structures. Just as the health of our salmon populations requires sound water policy, the health of our community – its ability to meet the needs of its people – requires sound social policy. A truly sustainable social policy means that we must build housing appropriate to the needs of the whole community, not simply those who can afford to pay the high housing costs that are common in our region. It demands that those who have been left behind in the recent boom years be given a chance at living wage jobs so that they may catch up to the rest of the community, especially during this time of economic crisis. And it means that we develop a region-wide transportation plan that connects regional activity centers with an integrated system of rail, buses, bike lanes, and roads that gives people real, affordable options to the automobile.

    As Julia Sterkovsky of the Seattle Human Services Coalition has written, “Sustainability on a deep level is about balance. To be able to sustain something all the components must be regenerative and interdependent. If we all work together to fully embrace sustainability to the depth that includes the most basic and elemental aspects of what is needed to sustain life and communities, then we are clearly acting on the basic principle of interdependence: that we are all in this together.”

    As with environmental sustainability, it is possible with a definition, a plan, and a system of accountability. All we need is the will to begin.

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