Sustainable communities: what should our priorities be?
OBJECTIVE
Reports of the degeneration of Earth's natural life-support systems have focused the minds of those in the scientific, political and general communities on how to avert a collapse. For many health promotion practitioners the effective unit of social change is the community, the interconnected web of people and place that makes up a human living system. The challenge lies in determining just what makes up a sustainable community under 21st Century conditions.


METHODS
This paper reviews major national and international programs working towards sustainable communities, in order to arrive at strategies that establish the necessary interconnectedness and collective action within each individual community.


RESULTS
Moving to a sustainable community under these conditions appears to meet the conditions of a 'wicked problem', that is, one that lies outside the present capacity of the society to resolve it. The move therefore calls for guided social change.


CONCLUSIONS
The priorities for guiding the change to a sustainable community involve collective thinking and action as a mutual learning process among the affected individuals, communities, experts, and organisations, towards a holistic sustainability goal.
Brown
Valerie A
VA
University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, and Local Sustainability Project, Australian National University, Australian Capital Territory.
Ritchie
Jan
J
D003256:Community Participation; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D004463:Ecology; D004782:Environmental Health; D006291:Health Policy; D006292:Health Priorities; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D012922:Social Change; D014480:United Nations