The Global Village In The 21st Century: Persistence, Sustainability, And Futures
John W Keller
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John W Keller
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Because these two assumptions are decidedly "counter cultural," they will appear to many as impractical [Theobold, 1997]. "All of us know," for example, that people prefer to live in cities because there are more opportunities, services, and great personal fulfillment. "Everyone knows" that successful business and economic development must stay focused on metropolitan locations to maximize transportation and lobor costs. "Everyone knows" that many of our small towns and villages are in distress and that even though the unsettling of the countryside may be a national tragedy, it amounts to no more than a natural process that will continue to occur over the next century.
Defining rural on an international basis was at one time synonymous with agrarian, hunting, and gathering pursuits. However, diversity has transformed an international definition of rural to a more diverse concept. Many rural areas now more dependent on recreation and tourism, services, and the new small scale manufacturing industries than they are the traditional pursuits of farming, fishing, forestry, and natural resource extraction.
Since 1950 it should be clear that metropolitan settlement structure leading to urban conglomerations is the dominant growth form of the world. Metropolitan areas will account for 70 percent of the net growth in world population during the 1990s --- an additional 67 million people every year. Other than natural increase, the prime engine of metropolitan growth is rural-to-urban migration. It is, however, important to note that rural - to - metropolitan trends have changed directions several times in the latter part of the 20th Century. It would appear that change, rather than stability, is the typical demographic and economic situation for most of the world's rural and nonmetropolitan areas at the end of the 20th Century.
The United Nations reports that 43 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas in 1990; a 34 percent increase since 1960. In the next several years (2005), the world will pass a historic milestone: more than half of its population -- or more than three billion people -- will live in cities. At the turn of the century, only 14 percent of the Earth's population called cities home -- and just 11 centers on the planet had more than one million inhabitants. Now there are 400 cities with populations of at least one million, and 20 megacities with populations exceeding 10 million, with a half dozen of them approaching or exceeding the 20 million level. While the developing world still flocks to core cities, much of Europe, North America, the Russian Federation, and Australia are reversing the process: emptiness at the center and growth on the edges - or the new "Edge City" metropolitan areas.
At the halfway mark of the 21st Century, more than 70 percent of the world's population will live within the metropolitan framework (an area now loosely defined up to 40 - 100 kilometers from the older urban cores). In most more developed nations, especially in North America and Europe, the urban-rural distribution now stands at 75 - 80 percent metropolitan to 20 - 25 percent rural.
A major consequence of urban growth is the proliferation of "megacities." In 1950 Shanghai was the only city in the developing world with a population of more than five million. According to the United Nations, by the year 2000 there will be more than 21 cities with 10 million or more inhabitants, 17 of them in less developed countries having growth rates predicted to soar for at least another 20 - 30 years. Most urban growth in Latin America in the 1990s will be attributable to natural increase, while in Africa it is expected to be caused primarily by rural-to-urban migration.
It took London 130 years to increase from one million to eight million residents, but Mexico City grew by as much in just 30 years --- from 1940 to 1970. Only 16 years later the population of Mexico City doubled to 16 million. Sprawling shanty towns and squatter settlements --- in cities on every continent, from Rio de Janeiro to Cairo to Bombay --- provide visible testimony of the human dimensions of explosive metropolitan growth.
The most common factor contributing to rural-to-urban migration is rural unemployment resulting in part from rural areas having higher fertility levels than urban areas, according to Lori S. Ashford, a senior policy analyst with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). A shortage of basic technology in rural areas also promotes out-migration and environmental degradation; it has led to a serious shortage of arable land in many communities throughout the developing world. While the growth of cities can contribute to economic progress, the study notes that problems arise when urbanization "occurs so rapidly that it strains the ability of urban governments to provide housing, sanitation, public safety, and other necessary services --- and when there are not enough jobs."
Most governments perceive urbanization as inevitable, but many have attempted various strategies to alleviate its problem by devising planning and policy solutions leading to incentives to either stay in place or reserve migration. These efforts include rural development programs, incentives for resettlement in rural areas, improvement of local infrastructure and services, and the development of satellite cities and new towns.
The original rural development paradigm was an outcome of the Bucharest "World Population Conference" 1974. The purpose of this conference was to address, at least in a preliminary fashion, the unprecedented population growth rates since the Second World War. The outcome of the conference was a reaffirmation of the prevailing development strategy adopted during the early 1950's to place an emphasis on investing in physical capital and fostering new industries in urban areas - generally at the expense of the rural areas. Planners believed increasing industrial output was the key to higher standards of living, and public investment in human and social development, such as health and education, was at best modest and biased in favor of the urban elites.
These early development strategies were far from optimal in two major respects. First, economic growth was often not as high as planned because capital investment and building of physical plant and infrastructure was not matched with sufficient development of human resources to effectively staff and maintain new facilities. Second, the gains from the economic growth that did occur were not equitably distributed throughout the population. Third, it did not address the interconnection between urban and rural place.
Many planners and development analysts regarded the goals of development under austerity as self-evident and non-problematic, seeing the only problems as concerning how to attain them. [Nussbaum and Sen, 1989]. The new paradigm recognized that both the environment and human settlement where open systems and regulated by things happening beyond local and national boundaries - the Global Economy - and greatly affected by natural and human imbalances. In short, the urbancentric view of the world was called into question, especially the prevalent notion that the purpose of rural areas was to provide food, fuel, and cheap workers. The new paradigm not only recognizes the connectivity of the urban - rural spheres, but also addresses the issue of rural vitality. For, unless rural areas are revitalized, the metropolitan centers must ultimately provide the rescue funds and resources to support the countryside. The solution is what we typically call economic development. In principle, the new paradigm called for self-sustaining economic growth and social policy designed to provide the requisites of existence and citizenship. While the former can help provide the fuel for the latter, we must be under no illusion that growth itself will fulfill basic needs.
Are rural economies built around tourism and amenities sustainable? Thought on this question is decidedly mixed and generally negative. Tourism, in one form or another is the world's second largest industry. As a whole, this activity mines and extracts wealth in the form of money and exports the final resources to metropolitan areas where the corporations and trusts reside. Tourism is dependent on wealth and increasing affluence - it is not an activity within reach of the world's poor. Thus, there is a closed cycle of events whereby tourism and amenity based economies demand ever increasing affluence and affluence itself is associated with migration to metropolitan areas.
Tourism, at least on the large scale, transforms social and cultural systems at the local level. The often discussed Down Valley Syndrome in the United States in an example. The Down Valley is an area in Colorado near Vail and Aspen where growth and wealth is entirely dependent on natural amenities. Local economies and affluence have increased to such a level in the past 25 years that the original inhabitants of the small communities can no longer afford to live there. They must commute long distances to hold the jobs that service the tourism industries.
Tourism and amenity jobs are among the lowest paying service industries in the world - or what is termed minimum or subsistence wage in most countries. The firms that service the local industries are lobor intensive and built around employment in food service, lodging and accommodation, information assistance, maintenance, and service sales to the traveling public. Since most tourism is seasonal, the industry depends on high migration rates based on boom and bust seasons that in turn demand the cheapest lobor available. Factors such as poor seasonal weather, higher transportation costs due to both profit taking and increasing costs for fuels, can send a local economy into shambles within a short period of time - causing some of the highest unemployment rates in any industry.
Finally, there is the long term (and often conflicting) goal of greater economic sustainability in local areas based on tourism and amenities. The goal is to extend visiting seasons by creating greater opportunity to capture market share of tourism monies. Since 1980 the most popular methods in the western world are gaming or gambling, conventions/meetings, and multiple use recreation (golfing, theme parks, and similar facilities). The controversy over gaming/gambling as a supplement to economic diversity continues in a world-wide debate. Regardless, it has achieved phenomenal rates of return and now appears to be reaching saturation as larger scale enterprises are developed. Wage and salary incomes paid to industry employees are among the highest in rural areas. However, the outflow of capital to the gambling trusts and organizations, not to mention the loss of income to the rural poor, relegates these enterprises to a very doubtful force in long term sustainability.
On the other hand, current economic development practice now strongly encouraged in rural areas promotes inter-community cooperation, assimilation with other communities, and common work towards development. This is based on the theory that small size and remoteness is the major inhibitor of development efforts. Thus, the other side of the problem is how to overcome distance factors in rural areas. In general, remoteness factors are related to four major policy choices in central planning: transportation, critical service deliver, communications, and jobs skills/training.
Transportation factors, once the driving force to link rural - metropolitan markets and exchange, continue to undergo global restructuring - the victim of austerity, decaying infrastructure, and planning changes. More developed counties, in this case typified by the United States, poured untold resources into the urban - rural roads and interstate highways to the detriment of long distance mass transportation systems such as autobuses and rail. While remoteness, as measured in travel time, still continues to decrease (at least marginally) user costs to maintain an immense system of roads (shifted in the form of fuels taxes, fees, and tolls) creates a system where it is no longer practical nor possible to switch to alternative forms of transportation.
Much of the rest of the world relies on rail transportation to reduce rural remoteness.
Although rail is by far more efficient that motor vehicle ground travel, ongoing operating costs, the impracticability of quickly developed new rail sites, and uneven rider use place increasing stress on maintaining efficient rural links.
As a planning solution, more rural to metropolitan transportation links and increased efficiency in creating these links, is only a partial solution to overcoming remoteness. The concept of "serving in place" rather than offering quick, efficient transportation from rural to urban centers would appear to offer better solutions that accepting increasing cost for time - distance solutions.
Critical service delivery, including both market and personal needs, is only partially related to transportation efficiency. How to provide the most essential needs to people in place is a major factor in overcoming remoteness. Planning solutions and policies abound to deliver both goods and service to remote areas, the most common and enduring being to service centrally to regional centers, which in turn access the needs and deliver services to outlying towns. The solution is not total, however, since service change is the norm rather than stability. While acknowledging that the private market has adjusted to a remarkable degree to service critical rural needs (parcel, mail, telephone and other telecommunications services), it should also be understood that demographics, expectations for health care and education, and personal consumption have also undergone major changes in the last half of this century. In short, many of the delivery systems created since the 1950's are now outmoded and inefficient to meet the challenge of 21st Century remoteness.
Communications, more specifically telecommunications amounting to both advanced systems of current technologies, and emerging forms of real time delivery, are predicted by many to be the total planning solution for rural areas. Unlike transportation outcomes, which must overcome place to place remoteness, telecommunications offers the hope of in-place service and need delivery. It is attractive, if for no other reason, because it offers quick and incremental upgrade paths - often at a decreasing marginal costs - rather than enormous sunk costs experienced in transportation and regional development.
The final factor to be discussed, because it serves to impact that cost of remoteness, is job skills and training. No society or societal sector in the global world can afford to concentrate its educational and development resources solely in metropolitan areas. Yet, decentralization of educational resources and development ranks exceptionally high on the list of major expenditures of any nation aspiring to greater sustainability and vitality. Both public and private systems have responded throughout this century to deliver education, jobs skills, and general training to remote areas - both in-place and through regional centers coordinating with outlying communities. But, it would appear that, even with local self-help and capacity building programs, the delivery of these vital services is reaching maximum effort under present funding and technology.
Efforts to redirect material resources to rural areas have been ongoing throughout the 20th Century and far out number programs targeted towards urban areas. Worldwide, major efforts include wide-ranging programs such as education (extension), farm and price supports, direct grants-in-aid, revenue sharing, new towns, and health care - to mentioned but a few. No comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of these programs exists, but few will venture to say that trillions of dollars poured into rural development has not made a difference in the shape of the nonmetropolitan sectors of our countries.
Many rural sociologists argue that it is the scarceness of resources, the need for austerity, and the concomitant appreciation for the assets that do exist that creates the unique blend of community and sustainability thought to be prevalent in the world's nonmetropolitan areas. On the other hand, it is also widely argued that it is the dependence of small communities on others for aid that creates a limited perspective or community vision and a clearly articulated path into the future. Whatever blend of perspective, it is abundantly clear that the request for resources is an all consuming factor in the life of small communities.
Human resources did not come into prominence until the latter half of the 21st Century, although as early as 1915 one sociologist, Charles Galpin [Galpin, 1915] recognized and wrote extensively on the importance of community social strength in reaching higher levels of development. Beginning in the 1980s, the link between human resources and ability to function in a new world of local economic development became closely tied to local capacity for leadership, problem solving, expertise, and the creation of new leadership.
Tambunan [1995] and others argue that there are two quite different conditions under which rural lobor might shift from traditional agriculture, fishing, forestry and extractive pursuits: (a) when lobor is pulled or "attracted" out of agriculture into better non-agricultural opportunities; or, (2) when lobor is "pushed" or forced out of agriculture by declining employment opportunities into relatively worse RIs (marginal occupations) whose capacity to absorb large quantities is achieved at the cost of extremely low, and possibly declining incomes. The first type of RIs (attracted) are typically run on a more or less stable basis with a business goal of surplus generation and growth using hired lobor and a certain degree of technical sophistication. This is in contrast to the second type of RIs which are often seasonal, run with the help of unpaid family lobor, using rather primitive technology catering mainly to local markets.
The argument against sustainability and a total planning solution is that a heavy presence of the second type of RIs denotes increasing poverty in the region. Some researchers note, therefore, that the presence of the second type of RIs can only be justified on the basis of their lobor intensity and not productivity or income gains.
In North America, specifically, rural development traditions are embedded in the work of both government and universities, albeit with varied outcomes. An emergent feature of the effort on this front has been investment in human capital in order to root local revitalization initiatives more firmly in rural communities [Murray and Dunn, 1995].
The root challenge of all rural communities must be the shaping of new strategies responsive to the enduring realities of rural economies and cultural life - high unemployment; persistent poverty; deteriorated social well-being; lower earnings; and diminished health care - as well as changing national and global circumstances. Revitalizing "rural" must include the participation of small communities in search of positive change, whereby local people are encouraged to think more about their futures and to put into practice their ideas for securing those futures. Capacity building, therefore, deals mostly with the ability of local people to solve problems. These process dimension programs seek to bring about change by forging new skills within rural communities related to leadership, mediation and conflict resolution, group processes, understanding the business of government, and the articulation of a shared vision. In the simplest terms, capacity building can be defined as increasing the ability of people and institutions to do what is required of them [Newlands, 1981].
Grass roots LED not based on tourism, natural resources, or recreation is very strongly identified with community led regeneration initiatives. Although actual project success is decidedly mixed toward the negative side, investment in capacity building measures apparently provides the necessary foundation for sustainability of effort. The three largest process dimension projects run in the western hemisphere - Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Iceland - demonstrate an overarching theme of capacity building. Admittedly, each is an island monoculture (perhaps the most sustainable cultures on earth) with historic ties to generational land ownership. Regardless, it appears that the "soft side" of a rural sustainable future depends heavily on the ability of rural people to engender self-help and create a problem solving attitude. In the final analysis, much of the evidence of process programs gathered to date runs counterculture to the "brick and mortar programs" favored by government where visible and ascertainable results are so important.
On a worldwide scale, recent literature assesses counterurbanism as occurring throughout much of the world - albeit at very diverse rates [Campsion, 1989; Coppack et al., 1989; Lessinger, 1991]. In truth, the evidence for urban population dispersal is strong while the proof for rural rejuvenation is weak. As noted, the reasons for this phenomena are diverse and complex, and should not be confused with temporary lobor migration, but from an overall standpoint there are three controlling factors.
First, it is important to understand that the predominant growth form in the world today - metropolitanism - is undergoing considerable change. Traditional rural communities lying within 65 to 120 kilometers of the metropolitan fringe show a strong propensity to expand in population size and economic diversity. This large sphere of distance influencing surrounding fringe areas, sometimes called penturbia or the component economic area, is quite possible the final wave of spatial development of large urban centers before urban agglomeration occurs. Forces associated with this change are many, but predictable. In the western world, it is often associated with the quest for more affordable housing, less computing to work, educational opportunities for children, lifestyle and amenities. Since most - if not nearly all - of the communities within the 65 - 120 k growth ring are classified as rural or small town (ranging from 15,000 to 5,000 and under), it is not surprising that demographers report new rural growth and counterurbanism.
Second, not all of the more remote rural areas have experienced depopulation. Fully 25 - 30 percent of communities in the more developed countries report that small towns have gained in population during the past 30 years. Again, the factors associated with this growth are complex, but can be said to center around several major causes. The presence of tertiary (university) education systems is important, as is the location near major transportation links. The main factor, however, at least in North America and Western Europe, are amenity rich areas attracting lifestyles, tourism, recreation, elderly retirement, and land investment opportunities. Also, regions with significant extractable or renewal natural resources (often boom and bust) fall into this category. A final factor, regional towns, will be discuss in another section.
Third, although the most remote rural communities show considerable aggregate population loss, some (but not many) seem to have beat the odds and sustained or even exhibit growth while their neighboring communities have perished. The evidence for this counterurbanism is sketchy at best and relies mainly on individual case studies rather than aggregate data, and for every success story their appears to be dozens of declining towns. There is solid evidence that renewed local leadership from inmigrant entrepreneurs (especially retirements) plays a role in some counter-urbanization. Governmental and private economic development programs must surely account for a portion of this reversal - although the evidence is not clear. The economic phenomena of clustering of related economic activities may, in fact, play a greater role. Governmental direction of capital expenditures, often using triage concepts, seem to have an impact in larger remote rural communities when prisons, hospitals, and related facilities are constructed.
It is unfortunate that much of the discussion concerning counterurbanism is clouded by the lack of any true working definition of "rural." Nearly every researcher, NGO (non-governmental organization), bureaucracy, and government continues to use their own specific terminology for rurality. Places with populations less than 1,000; 2,500 (United States); 3,000 (Canada) 5,000; or even 25,000 may or may not be classified as rural. Researchers speak of "deep rural," semi-rural or even semi-urban, while others use metropolitan capture, country towns, and remote rural. Until there is some degree of agreement on place specific communities, this confusion over the concept of counterurbanism is likely to continue.
Regional country towns display a wide population variance, depending on the degree of remoteness and economic function. In North America, regional towns rarely display a population base less than 10,000 persons, but the median size is 25,000 and will range upwards to 50,000 persons. Diverse dependency will typically begin to appear around the 10,000 person level and becomes statistically significant at 25,000 persons. Diverse dependency is a term coined by the United States Bureau of Economic Research and rests on the concept of local economic function [E.R.S. County Typology, 1995].
Economic Dependency Types include:
There is worldwide evidence that the larger regional country towns are rapidly approaching non-specialized economies, although employment tends to be heavily weighted in favor of services and manufacturing, as they assume the leading provider roles in their spheres of influence. It also appears that they have or will soon gain the necessary concentration of capital, population mass, and economies of scale to provide the essential development functions, health care services, manufacturing and employment opportunities, and cultural assets to sustain large and remote rural hinterlands.
In terms of government and NGO [non-governmental organizations) policies on rural development, the regional country towns provide an idea target for grants, fiscal allotments, and direct services. Many European countries have come to realize that these regional centers flourish given only minimal resources for educational and health care service - in particular.
The concept of rural triage is especially important for centralized decisionmakers considering policies on regional towns. Triage is, of course, an emergency medical technique for concentrating on those patients that show the best promise of recovery rather than those in critical condition or those that will probably stabilize. Given the assumption that small, remote rural centers have little hope of a sustainable future unless they are linked to unique resources, and that rural communities tied to metropolitan influence will be sustainable in the future, the best policy may be to concentrate on all but the most critical resources on those communities which, given immediate attention, demonstrate great promise.
Regional country towns fit this classification nicely. First, they are survivors in their spheres of influence - they have managed to gain supremacy over their economic hinterlands. Second, they are sustainable from the standpoint that they have the capacity to provide both employment, food, and shelter at some of the most reasonable costs in the world today, Third, they can provide a partial solution to the exit roads syndrome from smaller rural areas by providing retirement opportunities for the elderly and educational chances for youth who would otherwise naturally migrate to metropolitan areas. Finally, they provide an excellent occasion for government to decentralize their social and service functions in the more remote areas of a nation. If the concept of local economic redevelopment holds promise, then it must decentralized empowerment to the local place. But, given the performance record of small, rural places in comprehensive health care, education, and employment growth over the past 50 years, this empowerment must be anchored in communities with the capacity to eventually generate a sustainable future over a wide regional territory.
The true, large scale impact of telecommunications on rural areas lies some distance in the future; some would say between the year 2030 and 2050 before global wireless is a truly dependable and integrated source of doing business. Even now in 1997, digital communications through the Internet are reforming some selected market relationships between rural and metro locations. Without a doubt, telecommunications will have a marked impact on the two overriding factors that affect non-metropolitan performance: remoteness and lobor pools.
Reliable, real time telecommunications cannot solve, but will certainly diminish the impact of distance between more remote rural locations and their major markets and suppliers in metro areas. The bourgeoning service sector worldwide that is essentially responsible for the assimilation, interpretation, and management of information will no longer be place bound - location will be irrelevant assuming that global communications will be the same everywhere. Telecommunications will be a major factor in transforming, rather than reforming, the way rural communities do business and live their lives. No amount of digital information can reform the basic distinction between the urbanized and the small place given the massive imbalance of resources. It cannot be a total planning solution, but it can help to create a greater competitiveness in the way rural people receive their education, medical and social care, market their goods, acquire their supplies, and conduct their affairs. It is assumed that rural areas already showing signs of great vitality will be best positioned to benefit from the new technologies and more remote centers already in decline the least.
There is, however, a counter hypothesis to this argument. Telecommuting may contribute to further suburbanization and urban sprawl by releasing households from locational constraints related to maximum acceptable commute time and distance (Mokhtarian, 1991b). Because the practical use of modern digital telecommunications is such a relatively new activity, no studies have been able to confirm or deny this hypothesis (Handy, 1994). If this indeed occurs, the environmental costs of further sprawl could far outweigh benefits received by reduced automobile and office use. It is difficult to estimate the likelihood of this scenario because there are so many factors contributing to housing location decisions.
The second overriding factor related to rural - metro imbalance likely to be impacted by telecommunications is the lobor pool itself. Remote, rural areas may (at least according to some studies and many common perceptions in local economic development) be good places to start both services and new start-up firms, but they cannot sustain the need for increased capital and lobor due to lack of available resources and worker pools. The concept of telecommuting - large groups of workers who are place bound throughout a nation, but who work for a remote and centralized firm via digital communications - will diminish the need for regional lobor. The argument that telecommunications can never supplant the need for specific site, skilled lobor in manufacturing and fabrication will always remain valid, however it is necessary to realize that most now agree that the distinction between value-added activities and services is becoming less important. A good example is the computer itself. Although there is much value-added generated in the actual manufacture of computer components, the real profits and sources of employment are to be found in providing services to the users of these computers. These services include the production of software, consulting, information management, provision for telecommunications connection, and diagnostic activities - each of which falls under the general heading of services.
Telecommuting cannot completely restructure lobor pools in rural areas and therefore, can never be a total planning solution. One major reason for this, discussed above, is that rural areas cannot offer the increased consumptive and cultural benefits demanded by an increasingly affluent world. Telecommuting can, on the other hand, contribute substantially to the road towards a sustainable future of our non-metropolitan areas by bringing greater efficiency and alternative solutions to our fastest growing employment sector in the world - services.
A final factor to consider is the increased capability of rural areas to build their capacity for survival and to network with other ventures during the great building period of telecommunications. Planning theorists [Friedmann, 1991] often discuss the need for a transactive source of planning based upon the building and combined capacity of networks and groups. The task of planners, according to the transactive planners, is to link these networks into effective, participatory teams capable of transforming settlements. Reliable telecommunications - specifically virtual groups, may be the most effective method of realizing this goal.
To be successful, efforts to rejuvenate the rural countryside must rest on genuine local preferences. "Underlying these preferences is some understanding of what rural individuals, considered simply as citizens of a country, are thought to deserve. Since the 1940s many countries have made the political determination that all citizens, regardless of place, were entitled to electricity, decent roads, schools, and adequate water/wastewater facilities. The question in the next century is whether access to information management through digitalization and fiber optics will be similarly defined as elements of social citizenship. The question is on the table, and the viability of most of our rural areas hangs in the balance." [Galston, p. 266]
A sustainable countryside without global deliberation is certain to generate distortion, unfairness, and unpleasant surprises. Nations must assess the ways in which partially conflicting goals such as growth and development, equity, continuity, and local participation are to be ranked and balanced.
Clearly, rural sustainability is far more than simply an economic process. If we are to enter into a age of rural rejuvenation we will need a new vision and what success would look like. The path may vary, but at a minimum according to Ted Bernard, it must contain the following process [Bernard, 1997]
A Good Working Knowledge of the Ecosystem - To Practice sustainable resource management, a community must first understand the basic ecology of their home place.
A Commitment to Ecosystem Health - The community must understand that answers to conflict lie not in balancing multiple demands, but in seeking first to do no harm to the elements that will sustain the future of the community.
A Commitment to Learning - A community must understand that the knowledge necessary to make good decisions on behalf of future generations is constantly changing.
Respect For All Parts - To achieve rejuvenation a community must have a basic land and human ethic and a respect for the creative force that spawned the integrated parts of human settlement.
A Sense of Place - A sustainable community would be deeply attuned to its home place. This sense would not be static, but living and dynamic, learning from the loss and struggles of the past.
Acceptance of Change - A community in balance understands that change is both inevitable and unpredictable. They would learn that given the inevitability of change and the unpredictable nature of its outcomes not to aim for a rigid end product.
A Long Term Investment Horizon - A community prepared to make decisions about its future would strive to insure that the natural, economic, and social returns would be as stable, diverse, and secure as possible.
Ability To Set Limits - To be sustainable requires acting with the knowledge that both natural and human systems have limits and that they cannot pushed to abandon.
Collaborative Leaders and Operators - People willing to work in collaborative ways are crucial to the process. They understand how to bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information to create authentic visions.
Tenacity - There is no quick formula for creating endurance. The power we have is the power of an idea we all agree on.
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