This unit introduces students to the geographical study of the sustainability of urban and rural communities. The geographical study of sustainable communities draws on areas of study such as physical geography, economics, sociology, public health and ecology, and town planning and regional development.
Urban and rural communities are significant because they constitute the locations where people live, work and participate in leisure and recreational activities. It is important for students to understand the role of planning in balancing the needs of all stakeholders and of the environment to develop sustainable rural and urban communities.
This unit encourages the study of an approach to sustainability that is underpinned by the values of social justice, ecological sustainability and democratic processes.
Like most things in Geography, the term 'community' does not fit into a nice neat package. We use the word a lot, but when studying geographical concepts it is important to ask more seriously: What is a 'community'?
Firstly, let us note that a 'community' is a construct, a model. We can not see a whole community; we can not touch it; and we can not directly experience it. Furthermore, a community may come in one of many shapes, sizes, colours and locations; no two of which are alike.
More importantly, a community is not just the people who are in it. A community usually was already existing when all of its current residents were not yet born, and it will likely continue to exist when all of the people in it have left. It is something that is beyond its very components, its residents or community members. A community may have members who have temporarily moved to other locations. They may wish to eventually return, but not all do. A community in some senses may not even have a physical location, but be distinguished by being a group of people with a common interest. In our unit, however, the community is usually one with a physical geographic location, e.g. such as a specific settlement.
Secondly, not only is the concept of a community a model, but it is a set of interactions, human behaviours that have meaning and expectations between its members. Not just action, but actions based on shared expectations, values, beliefs and meanings between individuals.
In this unit, we will be mostly looking at human communities in form of urban and rural settlements. Urban and rural settlements are places where human communities have evolved and continue to evolve economically and socially in an attempt to maintain and improve their quality of life.
A significant measure of the quality of life and wellbeing of communities and individuals within these settlements is liveability. This is an indication of the quality of such things as health, employment, income, education, housing and accessibility of communities living in the settlement, as well as of the quality of the natural environment in which the settlement is located. Therefore, in order to evaluate liveability, the extended metabolism model is a useful model, which assesses liveability and the environmental impact of the communities living within settlements; which can be seen in the image below.
Extended metabolism model
The term metabolism refers to the flow of resources into a settlement and the waste outputs from the settlement. If, in addition to a settlement's metabolism, its dynamics and liveability are taken into account, the result will be an extended metabolism model. As you can see in the model above, in order to achieve more ecologically sustainable Australian settlements, communities within these settlements will need to reduce the quantity of natural resources they consume and the wastes they produce. Because the capacity of the earth's ecosystems to provide resources and absorb wastes is finite rather than unlimited, communities cannot forever sustain increases in resource consumption and waste production.
One way of considering the overall environmental impact of human communities and their settlements is to look at their ecological footprint. This is an estimate of the total amount of land needed to sustain the activities of people and communities within a settlement. A settlement's 'footprint' will therefore include all the land needed to produce food and fibre, to mine resources and to actually build a settlement, as well as the land, air and water needed to absorb wastes produced by people in the settlement. Studies of the United Sates have shown that each person in that country requires around 10 hectares of ecological footprint. This means, if every person on Earth had the same requirements, we would need more than three planets of our size on which to live!
While environmental sustainability (also called ecological sustainability) is certainly of great importance, a community's overall sustainability does not just involve environmental issues of resource conservation and waste reduction. It includes all aspects of the community: its economy, social life, culture, health and physical environment. Three fundamental needs therefore underpin the sustainability of communities in urban and rural settlements:
The need for sufficient levels of economic development in order to reduce income inequalities and poverty
The need for protection of air, water, soil and biodiversity, upon which we all ultimately depend
The need for social justice and cultural diversity to enable local communities to express their values when solving issues associated with economic development and environmental protection.
The image below illustrates the interrelation between these three needs in an overall model of sustainable communities. As you can see, this model incorporates three elements of sustainability; environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and social sustainability. The case studies of rural and urban communities in this unit will assist in the investigation of each of these elements, which are together involved in sustaining communities.
Cities are more and more under pressure to become more sustainable in order to cater for a growing urban population on all continents, but especially in Asia where we can find a huge amount of megacities. Also, there are many ideas and models which have been developed over the past few decades but the biggest problem seems to be the balance between what needs to be done now and what needs to be done for the demands of tomorrow.