As carriers of alternative visions of the twenty-first century, two polar trends appear to be giving shape to the emerging social and cultural landscape of the new millennium: global society versus the commonwealth of sustainable societies. On the one hand, powerful forces of globalization are obliterating territorial barriers, economic and political divisions, and cultural differences. Global economic restructuring decimates local political economies, causing the destruction of old industries and the uprooting of the existing labor force. The New Information Order dissolves local news sources and popular culture, bringing forth more homogeneous coverage of national and global news with a Northern Hemisphere bias and Westernized mass culture. Fast capital and worldwide markets undercut pockets of local capital and locally-embedded and regionally-rooted business and commerce.

In this era of fast capitalism and increasingly integrated financial markets, globalization increasingly takes on the appearance of a closed, self-reinforcing, positive feedback, growth system. Because the indicators of its own success are essentially similar to the indicators used by countries to assess their own economic well being, it tends to mobilize almost unqualified support from the major transnational economic players in the global game of expanding markets and cheap labor. But globalization is an incomplete process. It has an overwhelming tendency to marginalize those factors that might threaten or compromise its fixation with the long-term profit and market control. Globalization by its nature is a great polarizer. It pits the value of increasingly hegemonic processes of global production and consumption against the value of vibrant national and local economies and cultural traditions, and concerns for social equity and environmental sustainability. Yet, as developing forces operating under the banner of sustainability argue, it is a set of complex processes designed to fail as its approaches and exceeds the limited resources and capacities of the planet earth. Its ultimate doom stems from the fact that its is not structurally predisposed to consider any of these limiting factors in its decision making process, even though it will temporarily accommodate these constraints when governments or international organizations impose restrictions on its natural tendencies or when decision makers engaged in globalization become "sentimental" (i.e., introduce into their thinking "values" that are not included in the biases of globalizing processes).

Competing with these globalizing and fragmenting agencies are those counter-tendencies vaulting sustainable development to a high place on the global agenda. Operating under the banner, "think globally, act locally," myriad groups at all levels of sociality and governance press their claims for rebuilding society by making peace with nature and choosing a course of sustainable development. For a life of consumerism, these new social movements counsel the merits of simple and frugal lifestyles. As against the designs and schemes of the globe's power brokers to reorder the world convergent with transnational capital, the voices of ecology, economy, and equity preach the gospel of local and regional experiments in ecological global scientific knowledge, local groups and loosely coordinated networks of locally-rooted activists promote the case for sustainable development policies based upon local knowledge emanating from communities.

Even though there are alternatives operating around or beneath the dominant network of entwining economic, cultural, and political power supporting globalization, confusion abounds over the grounding concept of these alternatives. In the quest for a sustainable society, a widely accepted and ecologically grounded definition of the process for achieving sustainability eludes us. In this absence, we have in effect tended to adopt an incremental approach that might be characterized as "slouching toward sustainability." This incremental approach may be characterized as follows:

Although we may be a bit hazy on exactly what a sustainability process would be like (or even if sustainability requires a clearly defined process), we do know that by definition every fully realized sustainability process will be based on the use of renewable energy sources. We use this understanding to justify the assumption that any use of renewable energy is thereby a step toward sustainability. By a similar logic, we are driven to conclude that any move that conserves energy or reduces waste or reduces pollution is a step in the right direction. Lacking an overall program we are led to pursue such local optimums.

Lacking an overarching theory of sustainability and a real world process of attaining it, there seems no better social choice than to embark upon such specialized programs that lower consumption of non renewable resources and reduce production of waste products--in other words, programs that reduce the surface indicators of unsustainability through procedures of local optimization. In fact, this is a common strategy in almost all ecological programs. We have demonstrated elsewhere that such strategies, while they may slow down the rate at which problems accumulate in the merely buy some time. That time is wasted if it is not utilized to effect a conversion to a sustainability process.

Here is that complete definition:

Sustainability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process operating within an equitable ecological footprint, exporting no problems beyond its territory or into the future.

An explication of that definition follows:

Sustain ability is a local,...
_ Sustainability needs a place to happen. Although problems can aggregate and be manifest on a global scale (e.g., ozone depletion, global climate change), offenses to the environment are produced locally. These offenses are not the work of deranged or ill intentioned people, rather they are simply byproducts of productive, useful, and desirable activities. The further these offenses travel from their source the more diffuse and intractable they become. Yet when dealt with locally, at their source, as part of the process which produces both positive as well as negative products, the neutralization or reuse of all negative byproducts must be considered as part of the price of doing business. "Local," is to be read as city/region. The earlier history of our civilization is the history of city/regions--largely autonomous towns which gained virtually all of their material needs from their local countryside and had to maintain the quality of the countryside in order to sustain their way of life. There is thus an old tradition of local sustainability.

Sustainability cannot happen at the scale of the family--we are far too interdependent for that. Sustainability cannot happen at the global scale-- that is far too vast to be knowable or controllable. It is the scale of the city/region which is the largest scale capable of addressing the many urban architectural, social, economic, political and other imbalances besetting the modern world and simultaneously the smallest scale at which such problems can be meaningfully resolved in an integrated and holistic fashion. Even in an increasingly electronic age, one of the most enduring aspects of our lives will be where and among whom we reside--in what place, consuming what resources, exporting what problems. Sustainability is simply bringing balance to our physical communities through mutual negotiation and consent.

Sustainability is a local, informed,...
In order to be able to maintain the quality and the productivity of the local region and its countryside it is necessary to understand the consequences of the metabolic activities which occur within the city/region. Earlier towns operating within a largely closed system received rather rapid feedback as to the consequences of their activities. Because almost all activities manifested locally, cause and effect related to those activities were quickly understood. When imbalances threatened the city/system they were noted and adjusted locally. In the modern world there are effectively no local boundaries and positive activities at a small scale may well have negative consequences at larger scales. By using modern means, however, we have powerful tools both to design and monitor major energy and material flows and to model the projected implications of different processes we might choose to include in our city/region.

We are currently working on something called the Sustainability Engine©, which is a computer-based utility providing feedback on local cause and effect. The idea is that instead of a local culture evolving slowly over many generations through a process of trial and error, many different scenarios may be tried on the Sustainability Engine before anything is actually implemented. The Engine, which is a combination of computer aided design (CAD) with geographic information systems (GIS) with a strong database and a systems dynamics utility, makes it possible to try out a variety of alternative strategies and scenarios relating to the city/region. It provides many different kinds of feedback as it explores various "what if" scenarios and indicates the extent to which the various proposals are bringing the city/system toward balance or further away from balance. It thereby becomes the design and management utility for building urban scenarios, economic activity scenarios and process scenarios (energy and material flow scenarios) and the feedback tool to inform the stakeholders of the various consequences of their design ideas and lifestyle choices.

Sustainability is a local, informed, participatory,... Sustainability is a process by which a local community can decide how it will afford to live within its natural budget and the limits of its own creativity. If we are living beyond our means, it is always possible to limit our activities through treaties and legislation or through the restrictions of authoritarian regimes. But with the prospect of "top down" regulation we are already beginning to hear the expression "ecofascism" being leveled at proposals which limit our consumerist way of life. It seems clear that short of dictatorial restrictions sustainability can only be achieved through a process that engages the participation of all stakeholders. But representative democracy is difficult enough. How can one hope to create a process that engages a wide spectrum of people and interest groups on a range of issues upon which they are sure to disagree? How can one prevent the likelihood of issue by issue confrontation on a wide variety of unrelated questions?

There are several factors that make a sustainability process workable. First of all such a process starts with the principle that sustainability - that is the sustainability process - is non-negotiable, while at least in principle everything else is negotiable. That means that all participants in the process must agree that the health, equity and viability of the city/system is the precondition for any other decision. The sustainability process starts out as the Sustainability Game that the participants gradually learn to play. The nature of the Sustainability Game is to try to satisfy ones individual self-interest while maintaining the viability of the city/system. As an individual or an industry or a sector will be incapable of satisfying its own needs it becomes necessary to engage others to both provide those means, (the energy and the material) and to correct for the imbalances caused by the satisfaction of those needs. Using the Sustainability Engine each stakeholder will attempt to satisfy his needs and interests through a variety of different scenarios, each involving different strategies and different partners.

Strategies which throw the city/system out of balance are quickly eliminated or are rebalanced by introducing new ideas or processes with different attributes. Over time more favorable strategies are built upon and elaborated while less favorable strategies are put aside (although they are still stored in the Sustainability Engine, possibly to be revisited when new means are available at a later date.) Developing scenarios are favored and pursued when they satisfy multiple interests, when they bring the city/system toward balance and when they hold the promise of equitability for all the stakeholders. As the Sustainability Game proceeds the stakeholders increasingly realize that they share a common destiny and that significant synergies will result from their creative encounters and negotiations. As the game proceeds it can become less game and more a real economy and urban construct. As the construct proceeds the city/region is understood as an urban ecosystem and becomes less adversarial and more focused on building common wealth..

Sustainability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process,...
The problem with our existing economic system is that it has no built-in mechanism to insure its own long-term survival. To the contrary, because it demands growth and expansion it is designed to fail by running up against the physical and ecological limits of our planet. It is a system designed to encourage the maximization of production and consumption. It is not designed to pursue balance. Natural ecosystems in early stages of succession are also designed to maximize production at low levels of diversity, but as such systems mature, and organic material accumulates, the emphasis shifts away from production and toward maximizing diversity, resiliency and maintaining internal balances. This needs to be the model for human ecosystems. Using the Sustainability Engine to create different models of an emerging sustainable city/region the stakeholders are engaged in such a balance-seeking process.

Yet if the city/system is near to balance any major intervention is almost certain to throw the system out of balance. The problem is then to seek the means to bring the city/system back toward balance. Even a city/system that has been thrown far out of balance presents an opportunity for major interventions. In this game there are no inherently bad moves. On the contrary, if the city/system should ever come exactly into balance, then in a sense the game would be over and such closure might actually be undesirable or at least premature. In any event, the design and management of the city/system is an ongoing (never ending) process. At some point in the process when all the stakeholders are working together in harmony and the economics and opportunities develop, it may actually be the appropriate time to build the Sustainable City Implantation.

Sustain ability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process, operating. within an equitable ecological footprint (EEF),...
In the past, nature was assumed to be so vast as to be able to comfortably absorb any and all offenses that Man's activities dumped onto it. While this was far from true, it is now clear that we have long since exceeded many of nature's capacities. What then may we be permitted? What is our ecological budget? The Equitable Ecological Footprint (EEF) is our concept for the natural budget in land area, available for each city/region to support its way of life. It is an important determination, conceptually clear, which, once made, quickly gives us a clear picture of where we stand.

For a simple determination of the EEF for a city/region, simply divide a country's total land area by its population and multiply by the number of people in the city/region. This will not be the final EEF. The budget may be considered in a variety of ways, and the way in which it will actually be calculated is a matter to be determined in the future. For example, in determining food and bio-fuel production, it would be reasonable to consider only arable land area; but for carbon dioxide absorption, total land area might be considered. On the other hand, for various other considerations it might well be appropriate to consider a country's equitable budgetary rights to a share of the world's oceans and atmosphere. For modern, densely populated countries and regions, it may well become desirable or necessary to negotiate for an equitable partnership with less developed and less populous countries in order to share cultural and material resources with them in order to increase the size of an insufficient EEF. No doubt global considerations will also come into play (e.g., globally calculated EEF applied locally; population stabilization incentives, etc.). These are all determinations for the future research and negotiation. The point is: we have been appropriating environmental space in many cases far beyond what we can afford and far beyond what we are entitled to. EEF is an equitable method for permitting us to understand what we have to work with. Once the land and its resources have been identified for a given city/region, the informed, participatory, balance-seeking process can proceed.

In looking at existing city/regions, it is obvious that many do not have an adjacent land area available to constitute their EEF. In such cases (and this may well become the rule rather than the exception), it will become useful to contract with a rural partner region or regions whose needs and resources complement their urban counterpart. In such a case, the mutually dedicated partner regions will together form a contained ecological region. That is, together they have will have closed their ecological cycles within their equitable ecological footprint. This is the approach we are currently taking with our Westbahnhof project in Vienna.

Sustain ability is a local, informed, participatoiy, balance-seeking process, operating within an equitable ecological footprint, exporting no problems beyond its territory or into the future,...
The point here is that when the prior part of this definition is realized such a city/region will effectively export no problems beyond its territory or into the future. On the other hand, even this circumstance is negotiable, given our Fifth Operating Principle for Sustainable Cities, which states that "imbalances are to be negotiated outward." This means that in some case an imbalance may be exported from the city/region, but only if its rebalancing can be accounted for by an agency beyond the scale of the city/region. By adopting this theoretical framework as the basis of regional management, a city/region will be able to operate within the realm of sustainability. Once the viability of such a sustainability process is demonstrated, the success of that example will be a catalyst to the proliferation of sustainability to the countless other city/regions of the planet.

In reminding us that the natural abode of humankind is the city/region in harmony with nature, the sustainable cities movement is underscoring the point that we are inextricably embedded in the tissue of nature's body, the site of both our limits and finitude and our creativity and imagination. In an ironic and paradoxical sense, in the quest to build sustainable cities locally here and there throughout the world, we may yet find in our commonality and particularity that which is truly universal and global in all of us: the desire to find a home and be at home in community with others and in nature's life-sustaining processes.

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