286999429
286999429
286999429
By
James E. Powell
APPROVED:
2 . “7 f '2 - ^ 0 / Z .
Date
CONDITIONS FOR EFFECTIVE USE OF COMMUNITY SUSTAINABILITY
THESIS
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
By
Fairbanks, Alaska
May 2012
UMI Number: 3528845
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a note will indicate the deletion.
UMI 3528845
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Abstract
As the number o f community sustainability indicator programs (SIPs) increases in
many regions o f the world, including in the United States, questions continue to arise
regarding how decision makers can use sustainability indicators (Sis) to contribute in a
meaningful way to their efforts to build resilient and sustainable communities. Through
an analysis o f the sustainability activities in sample cities from across the U.S. and a case
study o f one city that adopted Sis but has yet to implement them, this study seeks to
uncover the conditions for effective SI implementation and use.
The study began with a review o f the literature on communities’ sustainability
efforts and the historical roots o f sustainability and resilience theory leading up to today’s
sustainability indicator projects. A heuristic model for adaptive learning is presented to
illustrate the relationships among sustainability, resilience, and administrative concepts,
including the goals and domains o f sustainability indicators.
The study’s data collection and analysis began with an Internet-based
investigation o f 200 U.S. cities. A five-tiered system was devised to categorize findings
regarding sustainability patterns and trends in studied cities, ranging from an absence o f
sustainability activities through fully implemented sustainability indicators. The second
phase o f data collection employed an electronic survey completed by informants from a
38-city sample o f the 200 investigated cities, followed by phone interviews with
informants from cities that ranked high for developed sustainability programs. A case
study using focus group research was then conducted o f one small U.S. city, Juneau,
Alaska, where local government adopted sustainability indicators in the 1990s but fell
short o f implementing them.
Most cities in the U.S. have not developed sustainability indicator projects, and,
among those that have, few have been able to implement them fully. Am ong highly
ranked cities with sustainability indicators, several approaches, including innovative
organizational structures and adaptive learning processes, were found to be present.
Recommendations for incorporating such innovations and for grounding sustainability
indicator projects in sustainability science, resilience thinking, and public administration
IV
theory are offered to help ensure sustainability indicators become fully operational in
Juneau, as well as in other communities seeking to establish successful sustainability
indicator programs.
V
T able o f C ontents
Page
Signature Page ................................................................................................................................. i
Title P ag e .......................................................................................................................................... ii
A bstract.......................................................................................................................................... iii
Table o f Contents............................................................................................................................. v
List o f Figures................................................................................................................................. xi
List o f T ables................................................................................................................................. xii
List o f A ppendices....................................................................................................................... xiv
Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................................x v
Chapter 1: Introduction...................................................................................................................1
1.1 Purpose Statem ent............................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Personal V ignette............................................................................................................... 1
1.3 Research Questions........................................................................................................... 5
1.4 Overview o f M ethods....................................................................................................... 5
1.5 O rganization.......................................................................................................................7
1.6 Limitations o f S tu d y ......................................................................................................... 8
Chapter 2: Theoretical Basis for Study o f Sustainability Indicators and
Sustainability Indicator Program s.................................................................................. 10
2.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................10
2.2 Definition o f T e rm s........................................................................................................ 10
2.3 Community as Unit o f A n aly sis................................................................................... 12
2.4 Literature R eview ............................................................................................................13
2.4.1 Ancient roots of sustainability’s concepts and theories................................ 13
2.4.2 Advent o f community indicators in the 19th and 20th centuries....................14
2.4.3 Emergence o f environmental indicators in the mid-20th cen tu ry ................ 16
2.4.4 Origins o f sustainability indicators....................................................................17
2.4.5 Sustainability indicators distinguished from other indicators...................... 18
2.4.6 Examples o f Sis and SIPs first used in the U .S............................................... 19
vi
L ist of Figures
Page
Figure 1.1. Three Study Components and Methods for Each...................................................6
Figure 3.1. Community Sustainability Adaptive Learning Fram ew ork...............................38
Figure 3.2. Triple-Loop Learning D iagram .............................................................................. 44
Figure 5.1. Dendrogram for 38 Cities Using Average Linkage with SI Five Tiers 90
Figure 7.1. Map o f the City and Borough o f Ju n ea u ............................................................. 115
Figure 7.2. Photograph o f Downtown Juneau, A lask a..........................................................116
Figure 7.3. Juneau by the N u m b ers..........................................................................................119
Figure 7.4. Dendrogram with SI Five Tiers o f 38 Cities, including Juneau...................... 133
Figure 7.5. Network Diagram o f C odes................................................................................... 136
Figure 7.6. Continuum o f Community Sustainability Indicator U se...................................152
L ist o f Tables
Page
2.1. Main Characteristics o f S is ............................................................................................... 25
2.2. City o f Portland Sample Indicators..................................................................................26
2.3. Examples o f Bottom-Up and Top-Down A pproaches................................................. 27
4.1. N RDC’s 2009 Smarter Cities Population-Based R an k in g..........................................47
4.2. Proportional Stratified Random Survey Sam ple........................................................... 48
4.3. Five Tiers o f Sustainability Indicator U se ......................................................................50
4.4. Results o f Five-Tier SI Development Ranking o f 200 C ities......................................52
4.5. N RDC’s Top 10 Smarter Cities Compared with this Study’s SI Tiers.....................53
4.6. City Size and Variable Expectations................................................................................54
4.7. Sustainability Program and Institutional C h an g e......................................................... 55
4.8. Regional Distribution o f SI Tiers..................................................................................... 56
5.1. Survey Question Categories..............................................................................................67
5.2. Social and Economic Indicators and SI Five-Tier Ranking for 38 C ities................. 70
5.3. Cities’ Correlated Social and Economic C haracteristics............................................. 71
5.4. Cities with Sustainability Indicators............................................................................... 73
5.5. Response Median Comparisons Summary (Overall Contingency T ab le)................ 74
5.6. Importance o f Sustainability Indicators to Local Government................................... 76
5.7. Five Most Frequently Prioritized Community Sustainability Issues......................... 76
5.8. Cross Tabs for Cities With and W ithout Sis................................................................... 80
5.9. Holistic Approach with Sustainability Indicators.......................................................... 83
5.10. Social and W ell-being SI Integration Codes and R esponses.......................................84
5.11. Public Engagement with Sustainability Indicator Projects..........................................85
5.12. Sources o f Data Used to Develop Sustainability Indicators........................................87
6.1. Characteristics o f Cities Ranked High for SI Development ...................................... 95
6.2. City o f Fayetteville’s Sustainability “Areas o f Emphasis” ........................................102
6.3. Portland Bureau o f Planning and Sustainability..........................................................104
6.4. Examples o f Portland’s Outcomes-Based M easures..................................................105
xiii
L ist of A ppendices
Page
Acknowledgments
Many talented, thoughtful, and caring people contributed time and support
essential to the completion o f this dissertation. To add even this small sliver o f findings to
the world o f human knowledge took a large community o f mentors and friends. My
journey through this process has been marked by the deepening of existing relationships
and the creation o f new relationships, making it a journey well worth taking and one o f
my life’s most enriching and challenging endeavors. I would like to thank the following
people for the mentoring and clues they provided along the w ay to broaden m y capacity
for observing, thinking, and learning.
Jane and Kenneth Powell, my mom and dad, encouraged me from early on to
continue learning. Formal and informal educators themselves, they grounded me in
practical and natural world experiences. They gave me both the raw stuff to get started
and the discipline and environment to become more. Thanks to Douglass N. Powell, MD,
my brother, the first medical doctor in the Powell clan. Observing D oug’s early journey
gave me confidence that my journey could be possible and now actual. Tom Powell and
Nancy Powell, my brother and sister, offered assurance that if 1 needed help I could
always depend on them. I thank my m other and father-in-law Joyce and the Honorable
Jay Kerttula for believing in education and in me. The influence and steady and strong
support of my sister-in-law, Anna Kerttula de Echave, PhD, also help to make this
dissertation a reality.
Deep thanks to Gary P. Kofinas, PhD, Professor, my major advisor, who pushed
me and challenged my thinking over hours o f engagement and input that turned my ideas
into something testable and useful. Thanks to Terry Chapin, PhD, Professor Emeritus, for
his unwavering support for my dissertation topic and his accessibility for frequent
consultation throughout the journey. John Lehman, PhD, Professor Emeritus, introduced
me to Chinese philosophy and culture and, in doing so, allowed me to learn more about
my own culture. Thanks to Joshua Greenburg, PhD, Professor, who helped me with
ecological economics and coached and steered me along the way. Ivan Show, PhD,
mentored me in statistical methods and, with undying support, pushed me to think more
XVI
logically. Ivan endured long late night hours and found ways to feed me statistics, never
giving up. David Sandberg, PhD, helped me to stay focused and to keep my head on
straight. My appreciation also goes out to Chanda Meek, PhD, Assistant Professor, fellow
student, and confidant. Thank you to Liz Dodd, MA, my writing mentor, who over the
years has worked with me to improve my writing skills. Bill Cromer, pollster
extraordinaire, mentored me through both my first 600 pages o f cross tabs and through
my first focus groups. Thank you to all o f the Juneau focus group participants, as well.
John Davies, PhD, and Linda Schandelmeier provided me with shelter, kindness,
and love while I was away from home. I also thank Cecil Steward, Dean Emeritus,
University o f Nebraska, and Sharon Kuska, PhD, Professor o f Architecture, for their
support, education on the built environment, and friendship.
Last, and most importantly, I thank my wife, Beth Kerttula, who despite all our
life challenges, saw in me abilities I did not once see and who encouraged me to continue
my studies and complete my degree.
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Purpose Statement
As the number o f community sustainability indicator programs (SIPs) increases in
many regions o f the world, including in the United States, questions continue to arise
regarding how decision makers can use sustainability indicators (Sis) to contribute in a
meaningful way to their efforts to build resilient and sustainable communities. W orking
from the assumption that community Sis can be useful in promoting adaptive
governance, this study sought to identify the conditions that facilitate the implementation
and use o f community sustainability indicator programs. Through an analysis o f
sustainability activities occurring in sample cities from across the U.S. and a case study
o f one city that adopted sustainability indicators but has yet to implement them, this study
uncovered the conditions for effective SI implementation and use.
1.2 Personal Vignette
As an accredited observer representing the Northern Forum Organization from
Alaska at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro (commonly referred to as the “ 1992 Earth Summit”), I met
with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and governmental officials to
discuss the need for a new era in sustainable planning at the local level, as conceptualized
in chapter 28 o f the United Nations Agenda 21, a voluntary agreement adopted by 178
governments at the summit (UN Agenda 21). Soon after returning home to Juneau,
Alaska, five other local residents and I formed a task force under the auspices o f the
Juneau Chamber o f Commerce to develop community sustainability indicators for
A laska’s capital. Model sustainability indicators had been suggested in chapter 40 o f
Agenda 21 as a means o f integrating sustainability into planning at the local level. In a
series of meetings, our group completed the drafting o f Juneau’s Sis, after which they
were formally adopted by the City and Borough o f Juneau Assembly (“A ssem bly”) as an
Appendix to the borough’s 1995 Comprehensive Plan.
Later, as an elected member o f the Assembly and, for much o f my term, as the
appointed Deputy Mayor, I was asked to consider a wide range of controversies. The
2
array o f issues the Assembly faced changed constantly, involving such matters as
employee health care, schools, roads, land use, and employment. City staff helped with
our decision making by providing background information on the various matters as they
arose. Subjects considered at the Assembly level were usually controversial or could not
be easily disposed o f by the City M anager or other staff. Though Juneau's sustainability
indicators remained appended to the city and borough’s comprehensive plan for most o f
the time I served on the Assembly, no action on the indicators was brought before the
Assembly by city staff.
As the principal legislative and policy making body for the city, the Juneau
Assembly bears ultimate responsibility for the interests o f the community, integrating
local values and other information into its decisions. Positioned at the intersection o f
economic, social, and environmental issues, the Assembly endeavors to achieve not
perfect governance but what Chapin (2009) has termed the “Art of the Possible.”
During my term on the Assembly, a solid majority o f members self-identified as
“pro-development.” This group, correctly perceived by their constituents and co
members to support development interests, enjoyed a high degree of unity. This dominant
norm, which favored fairly unfettered resource development, created a pow er structure on
the Assembly within which any discussion o f environmental concerns, much less
sustainability or sustainability indicators, would likely be unwelcome. During this period,
not only were very few models available to guide a city like Juneau through the process
o f implementing sustainability indicators, but there was as yet little support for the city
expending staff or other resources on sustainability-related activities. In this political
environment, I was apprehensive about using terms or advocating vociferously for causes
that might isolate me on the opposite end o f the political spectrum from the Assembly's
majority, with little potential for realizable gain. I perceived early on that to present as a
moderate and level-headed member with a flexible attitude toward policy decision
making would mark a more judicious path across the political terrain on which I found
myself. I learned to select my issues carefully and to develop strategies for garnering the
necessary support before bringing those issues to a vote. Under these conditions, it made
3
little sense for me, as one lone assembly member who strongly supported sustainable
planning, to push to operationalize the adopted but dormant sustainability indicators I had
helped to draft.
In retrospect, during my tenure on the assembly, I believe four general factors
impaired the Assembly’s action on Juneau’s Sis: 1) “sustainability” and “sustainability
indicators” were terms not yet well-defined that lacked meaning in common usage;
2) sustainability indicators were o f little interest or counter to the interests o f a majority
o f Juneau’s elected leaders; 3) sustainability proponents lacked models to draw on in
lobbying for an implementation plan; and 4) no local government entity was charged with
overseeing implementation o f the Sis following their adoption as part o f the borough's
comprehensive plan.
Today, at the same time as communities across the country have begun to
formulate and implement sustainability indicators, the local policy climate has warmed to
issues surrounding sustainable planning. A renewed effort is now underway to resurrect
and refine Juneau’s dormant sustainability indicators. As this new effort begins, members
of the public and government officials will be looking to find effective means for not just
drafting Sis but for implementing an effective sustainability program that will find a
place in local decision making. What are some models in the U.S. that are being used to
formulate and implement Sis? Are Sis playing a role in improving com m unities’ triple
bottom lines - economic, environmental, and social? What barriers have other
communities faced in developing Sis and how have they surmounted those barriers?
What are some attributes o f successful sustainability indicator projects in communities
where the projects are playing a meaningful role in local planning? Through this study,
which arose out o f my personal experience with Juneau’s SI process, I seek to assist local
activists and government staff in finding answers to these questions as they begin the task
o f deploying an effective sustainability indicator project.
Over my nine years as a decision maker on the Assembly, I was impressed by the
lack o f any integrative mechanism for monitoring interactions among the broad array o f
subjects that elected representatives and government officials were charged with
4
overseeing. In meetings o f the Assembly as a whole and in committees, issue after issue
would be brought before us with little or no contextual background provided. I was
concerned not only about the lack o f information on how programs relate to one another,
but by the overall lack o f a systems approach to decision making. What would be the
effects of a decision on other programs; i.e., would another program be positively or
negatively affected by the decision? W hat trends were developing within and among
programs? Would the decision support or impede identified trends? Each decision was
made largely in isolation from the next. W hen impacts or consequences to other city
programs or community issues occurred as an outcome o f a decision, if not overt they
appeared often to go unidentified; in any event, these kinds o f cross-effects would rarely
be discussed at the Assembly level. In the absence o f any kind o f integrated indicators, in
making decisions, my fellow Assembly members and I relied on general instinct, staff
reports, periodic economic and social indicators provided by the State o f Alaska, and
general information gathered ad hoc from the community.
One o f the few planning occasions on which multiple programs were formally
considered at one time occurred when the Assembly reviewed the City M anager’s annual
budget document, which provides trend information, program performance updates, and
workload data for each program in a single document. However, the budget document
even for a town o f 31,000 tends to be several hundred pages long and much too detailed
for comprehensive analysis by Assembly members. We therefore lacked any accessible,
holistic tool that would have provided a suite or dashboard o f indicators to identify major
economic, environmental, and social drivers and trends affecting the community across
sectors and time.
I regularly found m yself wondering if there might be some other means for
tracking positive and negative, short and long-term trends across all o f the city’s major
issues— some kind o f integrated display that staff and Assembly members could refer to
when making day-to-day decisions. Given my experience with sustainability indicators, I
began to think about the role Sis could play as an adaptive governance tool and how they
could be implemented to promote a more holistic approach to local governance in
5
general. My search for answers to these questions and for specific tools that m ight help
inform decision makers as to the broader and longer term ramifications o f their decisions
led me to pursue a PhD in 2006, culminating in this dissertation.
1.3 Research Questions
My research sought to understand the role o f SIPs in building resilient and
sustainable communities. The literature on sustainability suggests that SIPS play a useful
role (Moldan & Dahl, 2007), and there is evidence in the literature that these programs
are expanding (see, e.g., Int. Inst. Sustain. Dev., 2000, cited in Parris & Kates, 2003).
Based on these assertions, I posed the following questions:
• Which U.S. cities currently have Sis, and what role, if any, do sustainability
indicators and sustainability indicator programs play in cities that are actively
engaged in sustainability planning?
• To what degree, if any, are cities that have developed sustainability indicators
programs integrating indicators into ongoing program planning, monitoring, and
reporting? W hat are some o f the facilitating conditions and barriers to effective
SI implementation?
• How do the experiences o f communities with sustainability indicator programs
inform the development and implementation o f successful sustainability
indicator programs in other communities?
• Why weren’t sustainability indicators implemented in Juneau, Alaska?
• What are the general conditions for Sis to be developed and implemented in the
U.S.?
1.4 Overview of Methods
The study consisted o f three main components: 1) an online investigation o f 200
U.S. cities; 2) a survey o f 38 o f those 200 cities; and 3) a case study (see Figure 1.1).
The first stage o f the research involved the online investigation o f a proportional
stratified random sample o f 200 communities, drawn from 645 communities in the
United States included in the 2009 report o f the Smarter Cities Project o f the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
6
That part o f the research was followed by a written questionnaire deployed using
the Internet-based Survey M onkey to gather data from informants in 38 o f the 200 cities.
Telephone interviews were then conducted with officials from three cities chosen from
among the 38 based on their high ranking by the Smarter Cities Project and/or on a
five tiered ranking system developed in the first part o f this study. Responses to the
surveys were tested statistically.
The study culminated in a review o f the process surrounding development and
implementation o f sustainability indicators in one city— Juneau, Alaska— wherein
qualitative data were gathered from three focus groups comprising a total o f 21 local
experts and synthesized using data reduction software and techniques. Focus group input,
together with other gathered data and information, served as the primary sources for the
Juneau case study.
1 2 3
1.5 Organization
The dissertation is organized into eight chapters. Following this introduction,
chapter two defines terms and presents a short review o f the dissertation’s theoretical
underpinnings, followed by a review o f the literature on sustainability. The literature
review traces the evolution o f sustainability theory, beginning with its earliest origins,
continuing up through the environmental movements o f the 20th century to today’s
community sustainability indicator projects and programs. The second part o f the
literature review focuses on the interrelationships among some o f the concepts and
theories most often associated with community sustainability indicators, including
resilience thinking, adaptive governance, and administrative theory.
Chapter three presents a conceptual model for an Input-Process-Output (IPO)
framework for sustainability indicator programs. This heuristic flow model illustrates the
relationships among the various resilience and sustainability concepts. It also shows the
flow o f information in a SIP process, thus providing a model for community adaptive
learning. Each o f the components o f the model and the relationships among components
are then explained.
Chapter four presents the results o f the Internet investigation o f city websites and
other materials on each o f a broad sampling o f 200 cities randomly selected from the
Natural Resource Defense Council’s 2009 “Smarter Cities” list of 645 cities. The
objective was to gauge the extent to which communities across the country are engaging
in sustainable planning in general and, among those that are, how many are using
sustainability indicators. The chapter identifies the degree to which each o f the cities is
engaged in sustainability-related activities, including their use o f sustainability indicators,
and ranks degrees o f activity in a five-tier system ranging from “Absent” to “M onitored.”
Chapter five synthesizes results o f an electronic questionnaire completed by
officials from a 38-city subsample o f the 200 cities investigated in chapter four (n = 200)
found to be engaged in sustainability-related activities. Follow-up telephone interviews
were conducted with officials from three cities that the research revealed to be high
sustainability performers. The results o f the telephone interviews were then analyzed to
8
identify performance attributes associated with each city’s high sustainability ranking. A
discussion o f these attributes is presented in chapter six.
Chapter seven contains a case study o f the stalled use o f Sis in the City and
Borough o f Juneau, Alaska. The case study is based on participant observation,
documents, and data gathered from focus groups to understand why sustainability
indicators were not implemented. Based on this case study and the overall research
findings o f this dissertation, conditions for developing and implementing sustainability
indicators are offered in support o f Juneau’s future SI efforts.
The final chapter summarizes the findings o f the dissertation, presents general
conditions for successfully implementing sustainability indicators, and suggests future
research on sustainability indicators and sustainability indicator programs.
1.6 Limitations of Study
One limitation o f the study concerned the small sample size o f cities in chapters
four and five; this was addressed by using standard sample size determination and
randomization. Another limitation involved a degree o f subjectivity in the focus group
research reported in chapter seven owing to m y experiences as summarized in the
personal vignette in chapter one, m y selection o f the 21 focus group members from the
limited pool o f qualified potential participants from my community, all o f whom were
known to me, and the relatively small total number o f focus group participants. As a
resident o f Juneau and former member o f the city Assembly, including as Deputy Mayor,
and as a significant actor in the development o f the initial list o f sustainability indicators
in 1 9 94,1 recognized the potential for personal views to influence the Juneau case study
results and addressed this potential by using random statistical approaches to select cities
for comparison and by using statistical software to analyze qualitative data generated in
the focus groups.
I attempted to abate any potential hazards related to my personal selection o f
expert participants by establishing three categories o f experts - elected officials, city
administrators and managers, and members o f the Juneau Commission on Sustainability
(JCOS). Although the number o f members in the three focus groups and the num ber o f
9
disciplines working with sustainability, have their own unique perspectives on how to
define the term. Across disciplines, the topics o f nature economics, well-being, types o f
capital, natural resource depletion, ecosystem services, temporal and spatial concepts, and
resilience theory are all considered relevant to discussions o f sustainability.
Generally, the literature defines sustainability as the effort to achieve a balance or
equilibrium between three broad objectives: maintenance o f economic growth,
protection o f the environment and prudent use o f natural resources, and social progress
that recognizes the needs of everyone (Custance & Hillier, 1998; Walter & W ilkerson,
1998).
In “Our Common Journey: a Transition toward Sustainability,” The National
Research Council (1999) defines sustainability indicators as:
repeated observations o f natural and social phenomena that represent systematic
feedback . .. [and] provide quantitative measures o f the economy, human well
being, and impacts o f human activities on the natural world. The signals they
produce sound alarms, define challenges, and measure progress . . . Generally,
indicators are most useful when obtained over many intervals o f observation so
that they illustrate trends and changes. Their calculation requires concerted efforts
and financial investments by governments, firms, nongovernmental organizations,
and the scientific community, (p. 234)
Two key acronyms appear repeatedly in the NRC study: SI (sustainability
indicator) and SIP (sustainability indicator project). The term “sustainability indicators”
refers to a collection o f specific measurable characteristics o f society and nature that
address social, economic, and environmental quality (Reed et al., 2006). Sis are
distinguishable from simple environmental, economic, or social indicators by the way
they are integrated and developed with input from multiple stakeholders (M aclaren,
1996). Sis may or may not be associated with a single domain or across domains, but
they are “sustainable indicators” because they are seen as part o f a suite o f indicators that
describe the state o f the system as related to sustainability and community goals. The
term “sustainability indicator project” is defined as various activities undertaken by
12
et al. (2003) who argue that information (i.e., indicators) needs to be collected and
modeled both on local and other scales and used in making policy at the appropriate
scale. Spatial aspects o f a community, large or small, determine the types and importance
given to each indicator. W hat we call “community” in fact represents a fundamentally
open system that is nested within a larger open system (I. Show, personal
communication, December 15, 2009). Political boundaries rarely match the biophysical
boundaries circumscribing issues such as transboundary pollution and game management.
Community and traditional concepts o f scale are becoming redefined with the
rapid increase in the number of “world cities.” W orld cities, as described by N g and Hills
(2003), are cities that have developed as a result o f international trade. Examples include
New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Paris. Mee Kam N g believes that large cities and
world cities are just as vulnerable to the development of ecological and social problems
as small cities (2003). In this dissertation, “community” applies only to cities in the
United States. The term will be used interchangeably with “city” and includes different
scales, ranging from small to large communities within which people reside under the
jurisdiction o f a common government.
2.4 Literature Review
The following literature review traces sustainability thinking from some o f its
earliest iterations up through today’s sustainability indicator programs and includes a
brief discussion o f three modem sustainability indicator success stories.
2.4.1 Ancient roots of sustainability’s concepts and theories
The literature on sustainability concepts includes writings dating back to the
economists, scientists, and philosophers o f the 17th and 18th centuries (Sharpe, 2004).
Western thought regarding sustainability can be found much earlier, though, in the early
writings o f Aristotle, who argued in Nicomachean Ethics that wealth is not the good we
are seeking; it is merely useful for the sake o f obtaining something else (Sharpe, 2004).
Concepts about nature and human relationships with nature remained fairly constant from
the 19th century through the Industrial Revolution (Lumley & Armstrong, 2004). An
abundance o f literature was produced during that era aimed at improving the human
14
condition and recognizing hum anity’s dependence on nature (Lumley & Armstrong,
2004).
The notion o f economic sustainability is firmly embedded in the writings o f Mill
and Malthus (Lumley & Armstrong, 2004). Mill emphasized that environment (nature)
needs to be protected from unfettered growth if we are to preserve human welfare in the
face o f the law o f diminishing returns. Malthus emphasized the pressures o f exponential
population growth on the finite resource base and its effects on inequities between the
rich and poor. These thinkers influenced each other and were also influenced by earlier
writings, such as those o f Adam Smith. For these philosophers, conserving nature while
trying to improve the distribution o f wealth was not a paradox, but a moral duty (Lumley,
2003). For example, Smith’s rational pursuit o f self-interest could only be followed if it
did not interfere with “the rules o f justice.” The ideas o f Mill, Malthus, and Smith sought
to promulgate just and practicable economic, environmental, and social policy (Lumley,
2003). As the industrial revolution progressed into the 20th century and developed
countries industrialized, ensuing environmental degradation from a lack o f environmental
management would eventually lead to increased environmental awareness.
Prerequisite to establishing a successful sustainability program, governments must
build local consensus on the definition o f not only the term “sustainability,” but the main
concepts and theories that surround sustainable planning.
2.4.2 Advent of community indicators in the 19th and 20th centuries
Literature portending today’s sustainability indicators began to emerge in the
early 1900s, with indicators or benchmarks designed to measure overall com munity w ell
being (community indicators) and aspects o f that well-being, such as social and
environmental variables. These writings formed the foundation for sustainability-specific
literature that began to appear in the late 1980s, as well as recent writings on resilience
thinking, adaptive governance, and administrative theory.
Literature on community-level measurement for balancing social-ecological
(environmental, economic, and social) systems began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s
(Gahin & Paterson, 2001). Commonalities can be found among the writings on well-
15
being, quality of life, and the sustainable community movement in that all share an
interest in developing and using community indicators to collect data on which to base
discussions and decisions.
According to Gahin and Paterson (2001), indicators, in their m ost general sense,
are useful to describe current conditions, to track trends over time, and to identify
important issues. Patricia Cohen, in A Calculating People: The Spread o f Num eracy in
Early America (1999), concluded that for society in the 19th century “what was counted
was what counted.” Cohen describes early efforts to develop indicators centered on
community public health data, such as demographic data, unemployment rates, crime
rates, and consumption levels (Cohen, 1999, cited in Cobb & Rixford, 1998). For
example, a study released by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1914, based on a survey o f
industrial conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, provided an early precursor to the
community indicators efforts o f the 1990s (Cobb & Rixford, 1998).
The Russell Sage Foundation study sparked a wave o f interest in other cities and
led to more than 2,000 local surveys on education, recreation, public health, crime, and
general social conditions (Gahin & Paterson, 2001). The National Bureau o f Economic
Research, founded in 1920, established a research committee on social trends, which
released the 1,600-page Recent Social Trends in 1933, focusing mostly on social and
educational indicators (Cobb & Rixford, 1998). Researchers, in a seminal publication
sponsored by NASA titled Social Indicators and published in 1966, noted that to
“understand second-order effects on social, political, and economic life a broad set o f
measures was needed” (Gahin & Paterson, 2001).
The literature on social indicators from the 1960s indicates that efforts were
attempted by Congress to guide public policy through the use o f social indicators, but the
method was never adopted (Gahin & Paterson, 2001). At the time, critics o f social
indicators argued that these data were not as useful as economic indicators because social
theory was not as well-developed as economic theory and, also, that social objectives
were fuzzy (Cobb & Rixford, 1998). However, the literature on social indicators began to
increase in the 1960s and 1970s with the advent o f the Journal o f Social Indicators
16
Research, founded in 1974, after which work on social indicators “bloomed” (Sharpe,
2004), with thousands o f books and articles on the topic published (Cobb & Rixford,
1998).
Three main areas where social indicators began to be applied at the city scale
during this era involved geographical divisions and population, interurban (measures to
compare and contrast cities), and performance delivery (Gahin & Paterson, 2001).
Quality o f life studies, state o f the cities reports, and various academic publications
experimented with economic and social indicator reports at the local level during the
1970s (Sawicki & Flynn, 1996). In the 1980s, social indicator activity slowed
considerably, as governments in the United States and other countries, as well as
international agencies, cut support (Sharpe, 2004). Cobb and Rixford (1998) note that by
the 1980s the social indicator movement in the United States had waned and would not
rise in importance again until the 1990s. Judith Innes’ oft-cited 1990 book on
measurement and social indicators, Knowledge and Public Policy: The Search fo r
Meaningful Indicators, states that while major decisions are surrounded by facts and
analysis, it is difficult to pinpoint the effects o f indicators. Innes concluded, however, that
under certain conditions indicators could be pivotal to policy debates or integral to
administrative decision making. Overall, from the literature from the m id-20th Century
related to social indicators, it is clear that social indicators expanded the range o f quality-
of-life indicators beyond traditional economic markers during this period (Sharpe, 2004).
2.4.3 Emergence o f environmental indicators in the mid-20th century
Several influential books written in the late 1940s and 1950s questioned the
ability of the earth to sustain a growing population. Literature that raised awareness and
concern for environmental issues began to build in the 1960s, beginning with the
publication o f Rachel Carson’s influential work The Silent Spring, published in 1962. A
great deal o f literature about population growth and the environmental limitations o f
prevalent patterns o f economic growth appeared in the 1970s and 1980s (Gahin &
Paterson, 2001). In 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency published
Environmental Trends, which included indicators to monitor and publicize the state o f
17
environment (Cobb & Rixford, 1998). Another example o f the increasing num ber o f
popular environmental indicator publications is found in the Worldwatch Institute’s
annual State o f the W orld reports, which present data based on environmental and social
indicators (Worldwatch Institute, 2004). Most recently, and on a global and sub-global
scale, ecosystem assessments were reported in the W orld Health Organization’s 2005
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The MA introduced a new framework for
analyzing social-ecological systems that has had wide influence in the policy and
scientific communities. Researchers Carpenter et al. (2009) suggest a framework for
assessing changes in social ecological systems by using metrics and indicators that can be
collected consistently and compared across the range o f cases.
2.4.4 Origins of sustainability indicators
The roots o f community sustainability indicators can be traced to the Stockholm
Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 (W ard & Dubos, 1972). The concern
about human effects on the environment continued from Stockholm and was reflected in
the recognition of the growing disparity between the rich and poor nations in the North-
South Brandt Report (Brandt, 1980) and the Report to the President (Barney, 1980).
Although several landmarks line the path to our current definitions o f
sustainability, the 1987 Brundtland Report constitutes the most significant reference on
this term. The report both popularized and helped to define sustainability as
“development that meets the needs and aspirations o f the present without compromising
the ability to meet those of the future” (para. 49). Following the presentation o f this
definition, discussions regarding how to plan for sustainability began to broaden, with
new definitions appearing and continuing to evolve into the 21st century. Since the
appearance o f the Brundtland Report more than two decades ago, the term
“sustainability” has been discussed extensively.
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or
“Earth Summit,” held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, presented a framework for writing
community sustainability indicators. In chapter 40 o f “Local Agenda 21,” a part o f the
agreement that came out o f the summit, it is acknowledged that “commonly used
18
indicators such as GNP and measurement o f individual resource or pollution flows do not
provide adequate indications o f sustainability.” The chapter goes on to state that
“indicators o f sustainable development need to be developed to provide solid bases for
decision-making at all levels and to contribute to a self-regulating sustainability of
integrated environment and development systems.” Since the time that statement was
published, a massive literature on sustainable development (Moffatt, 1996, cited in
Moffatt et al., 2001) has accrued. The academic and policy literature on sustainability
indicators is now so prolific that King et al. (2000) have referred to it as “an industry on
its own” (quoted in Reed et al., 2006, p. 406).
2.4.5 Sustainability indicators distinguished from other indicators
Maclaren (1996) stated that sustainability indicators, which measure conditions in
time and space, are distinguishable from simple environmental, economic, or social
indicators by the fact that they are integrated and developed with input from multiple
stakeholders in the community. Indicators o f sustainability aid in defining and m easuring
the characteristics or processes o f human environmental systems to ensure continuity and
functionality far into the future (Moldan & Dahl, 2007). Sustainability indicators must be
credible (scientifically valid), legitimate in the eyes o f users and stakeholders, and salient
or relevant to decision makers (Hak et al., 2007).
Sustainability indicators are needed in today’s world because measures such as
GNP alone no longer adequately reflect the complexities o f economic and social systems
(Moldan & Dahl, 2007). By the same token, as W alter and Wilkerson (1998) point out,
Sis are concerned with sustaining certain conditions and assets within a community and
often do not adequately recognize the inherent dynamic, interdependent, and complex
nature of natural and anthropogenic change. In early use o f Sis, communities focused on
definitions and the identification o f indicators to be used to measure a sustainable system.
Hundreds o f local communities responded to the call in Agenda 21 to address
sustainability by developing local sustainability indicators— over 289, local or
metropolitan in scope (Int. Inst. Sustain. Dev., 2000, cited in Parris & Kates, 2003). Local
19
sustainability indicators have moved from fairly static definitions of what sustainability
should be to a more dynamic approach.
Measures o f community well-being such as the gross national product (GNP) and
human development index (HDI) at best provide a single measure of current well-being
(Dasgupta, 2007). In addition to Dasgupta, several other researchers (see e.g., Arrow et
al., 2004) have argued that a separate index is needed to track current policies for their
consistency with sustainable development. Dasgupta suggests that the “productive base”
helps to bridge economic progress and other community dynamics by measuring
economic indicators as well as the condition o f different forms o f capital. A com m unity’s
“productive base” includes both its institutions and capital assets.
Institutions are different from capital assets in that the former comprise the social
infrastructure (e.g., laws, property rights, beliefs, extent o f trust among people) for
guiding the allocation o f resources, including the capital assets themselves. Capital assets
encompass not only manufactured capital (roads, building, machines), human capital
(education, skills, and health), and publicly available knowledge (science and
technology), but also include natural capital (e.g., minerals, oil, and natural gas; fisheries;
forests; soil resources— or, more generally, ecosystems) (Dasgupta, 2007). Sis may be
used to better frame criteria such as capital assets, inclusive wealth, and institutional
health.
2.4.6 Examples of Sis and SIPs first used in the U.S.
Several communities o f the U.S. have developed and are today using
sustainability indicators. These include Jacksonville, Florida; Santa M onica, California;
Truckee Meadows, Nevada; and Seattle, W ashington, briefly discussed below. All
developed sustainability indicators in the late 20th century and all are still actively
working with indicators. Important lessons can be gleaned from the experiences o f these
four cities— how their programs got o ff the ground and how they are functioning now.
Jacksonville’s well-being indicators
Jacksonville initiated its sustainability effort the earliest of these four cities, in
1985 (Wamer, 2006), followed by the other three, which started their w ork around 1995,
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after the United Nations Earth Summit. First drafted in 1985, the “Quality o f Life”
indicators for the city o f Jacksonville represent the longest-standing indicator o f this type
(Besleme, et al., 1999). Although they were labeled “quality o f life” indicators, the
Jacksonville indicators bear a close resemblance to what are termed sustainability
indicators by others and in the literature. Initiated by the Jacksonville Community
Council, Inc. (JCCI), a well-established nonprofit, the indicators seek to measure
quantitatively the quality o f life in northeast Florida, tracking trends in education,
economy, natural environment, social well-being, arts and culture, community health,
local government, transportation, and safety. They are presented in an easily accessible
“dashboard” manner (JCCI, 2010) that is published periodically for public review.
According to the literature, dashboards have been successful in influencing city policy
(Warner, 2006).
Jacksonville’s SIP, in many ways the original model for community indicator
projects, incorporates public participation, a consensus process, and annual reporting
(Besleme et al., 1999). With a very well organized system o f participation, including
subcommittees and task forces consisting o f volunteers selected for their leadership skills
and areas o f expertise, the Jacksonville project developed nine quality o f life topics, each
comprising ten indicators. The indicators are publicized in local newspapers and are
distributed to the community annually with an opinion survey that gathers information on
community perceptions. Indicators are influenced or augmented by targets set by
additional community volunteers (Warner, 2006). Annual citizen review o f the indicators
has led to important improvements. For example, an increase in adolescent pregnancy led
to the creation o f a pregnancy prevention group, which led to the establishment o f a
highly regarded multi-service teen center. Another example o f indicators affecting
change in Jacksonville is found in the quality o f life indicator for “num ber o f sign permits
issued,” which led to the JCCI approving an ordinance to eliminate mobile signs and to
regulate on-site signs. For many years, the project was funded by organizations outside of
local government, and conducted mostly by volunteers, but the city government recently
decided to fund the indicator project; m ost importantly, the indicators are now integrated
21
into the city’s annual budgeting process (JCCI, 2010). Consistent with one o f the major
points o f this paper, the JCCI is about to begin a rethinking process for its indicators that
will include consideration o f interrelationships among indicators, as well as a factoring in
o f neighborhood differences (JCCI, 2010). Jacksonville’s Sis are an example o f adaptive
learning in the sense o f indicators providing an effective feedback mechanism for the
general public and governance to evaluate issues and projects.
Santa Monica’s Sustainable City Plan
Another example o f a community indicator program that has had significant
institutional influence on local governance can be found in the Santa M onica Sustainable
City Plan (Santa Monica Office o f Sustainability, 2011). In 1994, the Santa M onica City
Council established the Santa Monica Task Force on the Environment, made up o f seven
citizen volunteers (Bertone et al., 2006). Working with city agencies, including the
departments o f Public W orks and Environment, the task force established sustainability
as the core guiding principle for setting city-wide environmental programs and policies.
The task force effectively engaged with the public— taking its pulse with opinion surveys
and seeking support for its initiatives in public presentations.
Informed by public input, the task force established eight guiding principles,
assigning each to one o f four major policy areas: Community and Economic
Development, Transportation, Pollution and Prevention and Public Health, and Resource
Conservation. Indicators were then developed under each o f these headings to assess the
effectiveness o f the programs in the policy areas (Bertone et al., 2006). Several
improvements have resulted from the use o f these indicators— notably, Santa M onica has
decreased its water consumption and greenhouse emissions while increasing recycling
and mass transit ridership and expanding open space. All o f the individual issues with
indicators have shown improvement toward sustainability.
One major self-criticism found in Santa M onica’s 1996 progress report card was
that the sustainable policies and programs were being undertaken piecemeal by the city,
but a systems approach, with increased attention paid to interrelationships among
indicators may be on Santa M onica’s horizon. Since the 1990s, Santa M onica’s
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Sustainability City Plan has become increasingly robust, with additional sectors o f the
sustainability added, such as human dignity and civic participation, which was most
recently reported in September 2010 as part o f its regular published annual reports. A
new guiding principle for sustainability states the following:
All Decisions Have Implications to the Long-term Sustainability’ o f Santa Monica.
The City will ensure that each o f its policy decisions and programs are
interconnected through the common bond o f sustainability as expressed in these
guiding principles. The policy and decision-making processes o f the City will
reflect our sustainability objectives. The City will lead by example and encourage
other community stakeholders to use sustainability principles to guide their
decisions and actions. (City o f Santa Monica, 2012, p. 1)
Truckee Meadows partnership
For the past several decades, Nevada has been one o f the fastest growing states in
the country (Besleme, 1999). Perhaps that explains a statewide interest in city and
regional planning. In 1991, Nevada law began to require the use of indicators in regional
planning (Besleme, 1999). Early in the process, the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning
Agency (TMRPA), which is charged with planning in W ashoe County, developed
indicators using a process that included public input, credibility checks, and financial
support to ensure that the indicators guiding the County Regional Plan truly addressed
citizens’ needs. Today, the region’s indicator project is operated through a partnership
between the TMRPA and a private nonprofit called Truckee Meadows Tomorrow (TMT).
The Truckee project’s stated objective is to provide information to help the
government realize the goals set by the regional plan. Indicators have been used by the
TMRPA as a barometer for measuring aspects o f quality o f life known to be valued by
the community. For example, infrastructure improvements have been modified or
changed based on several quality-of-life indicators (Besleme, 1999). Recently, TMT
expanded its reach through an initiative termed “Adopt-an-Indicator”— a program
designed to increase community participation outside o f TM T’s organization. Adopt-an-
Indicator invites individuals, organizations, businesses, and institutions to take
23
responsibility for specific indicators (Besleme, 1999). With the institutionalizing o f TMT
as a full partner with TMRPA, the indicators have affected public policy by influencing
decisions concerning such things as roads, human waste disposal, and schools.
Sustainable Seattle 1993 Indicators o f Sustainable Community
The “Sustainable Seattle 1993 Indicators o f Sustainable Community”
(“Sustainable Seattle”) was one o f the first SIPs established in the United States
(Besleme, 1999). It provides not only a good example o f an early SIP in and o f itself, but
is somewhat typical of the many other programs modeled after it. The Long Island
University Institute for Sustainable Development’s methodological review o f U.S.
indicator projects reported that o f the 170 sustainability projects examined around the
country at least 90 used Sustainable Seattle as a model (Besleme, 1999). The Seattle
example contains lessons applicable to many indicator projects that followed in its
footsteps.
Sustainable Seattle was started by a nonprofit group that grew to include
community activists from several different local organizations. After a subgroup
developed a mission statement and a definition o f sustainability based on local trends and
needs, Sustainable Seattle developed a set o f indicators grouped into several categories.
The program proved successful in garnering widespread participation from a cross
section of the community. The indicators were first published in 1993 and were later
revised in 1995 and 1998.
Unfortunately, Sustainable Seattle’s indicators have yet to be integrated into
decision making in a way that has brought them to bear directly on public policy. This is
typical o f other indicator projects that followed the Seattle model. After a quiet period in
2003 and 2004, Sustainable Seattle assembled a new group o f citizens with the stated
intention o f finding ways to persuade government to use the indicators to effect change.
The group appears to remain active; its website indicates a current focus on the
development o f regional indicators, the Seattle Area Happiness Initiative, and training.
Notably, the City o f Seattle and King County have established an extensive
citywide environmental management system inside the city bureaucracy, with many
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sustainability programs that use milestones and indicators for measuring progress. The
C ity’s Office of Sustainability and Environment houses several such sustainability
programs (Holden, 2006). Although there are no obvious signs o f formal relationships
between the City o f Seattle and Sustainable Seattle’s indicator project, indicator sets such
as those established for King County have clearly drawn on the example o f Sustainable
Seattle.
The above four examples, which represent a small minority o f cities that have
SIPs, demonstrate how SIPS have contributed to operationalizing community
sustainability by providing information to decision makers. These stories, with the
exception o f Jacksonville, are not included in the survey and case study that follows,
however the short descriptions o f these cities’ efforts are intended to provide an upfront
description o f what some o f the more advanced cities are accomplishing.
2.4.7 Characteristics o f Sis internationally
Since Agenda 21, the majority o f writings on local and municipal sustainability
have originated outside the United States. Scipioni et al. (2009), who have reported on
several international case studies, including W alter and Wilkerson (1998), Yuan et al.
(2003), Hezri and Dovers (2006), and Lee and Huang (2007), have made a short list o f
the main features o f sustainability indicators, summarized in Table 2.1.
25
Table 2.1 Main Characteristics of Sis. (Modified from Scipioni et al., 2009).
Table 2.2 shows sample indicators from Portland, Oregon, a city in the United States that
has developed a sustainability indicator program.
26
Table 2.2 City of Portland Sample Indicators. This table lists one sample indicator for each of
the five Areas of Concern that are part of the City of Portland Oregon’s “Signs of Sustainability
Report.” The indicators listed also include other components of the SI project, including actions
(paraphrased) and data sources (City of Portland Bureau o f Planning and Sustainability, 2006).
Area of Indicator Individual Actions Business Actions Data Potential
Concern Data
Source
Land, Air Native and Removing hard Removing hard Yes Portland
Quality, non-invasive surfaces and surfaces and Bureau of
Water vegetative revegetating, revegetating, Environ.
Quality cover (vs. % preferably with preferably with Services
impervious native species native species
surface)
Human/ Number of Promote walk/bike Walk/bike to Yes . PDOT
Community children that to school with own school week
Health * walk & bike kids sponsor
to school
Social / Civic Hours of Pay employees for Yes Portland
Economic engagement, volunteering volunteer time; Multco
Sustainability general social other actions to Progress
welfare sanction Board
volunteering
Other Energy use Changing Lighting changes Yes Portland
concerns: per capita incandescent bulbs Multco
energy use, to CFLs; Progress
air quality, weatherization board
emissions
that is more characteristic o f the social sciences (Reed et al., 2006). In his paper on
adaptive learning and sustainability indicators, Reed listed 10 methodological
frameworks for developing and applying sustainability indicators on a local scale and
organizes the frameworks into two groups - top-down and bottom-up. Four examples o f
Reed’s list are listed in Table 2.3.
o f sustainability, the concern that factors affecting sustainability are too complex to ever
adequately measure is to be heeded. The more we compartmentalize issues and activities,
the harder it becomes to see patterns o f change. Though it may be impossible to
completely model the system as a whole, there is general agreement in the literature that,
when formulating individual indicators, the process itself can arm a community with
useful information.
2.4.9 Bringing a systems approach to sustainability indicator projects
Sustainability theory and resilience theory both assume a systems approach
(Karlsson et al., 2007). These theories assume that problems can be identified and solved
more efficiently if, beyond examining a system’s individual components, the system is
treated as a holistic entity with interconnected elements. When seen as a principal
component o f a system, indicators serve as measurements and signals for change.
“Sustainable M easures,” a web-based informational and training organization working on
community sustainability measures, lists the following essential functions o f
sustainability indicators:
- address the issue o f the comm unity’s carrying capacity relative to the four
types o f capital: natural, human, social, and built;
- highlight the links between the community’s economic, social, and
environmental well-being;
- focus on a long-range view;
- are understandable to the community; and measure local sustainability that is
not at the expense o f global sustainability.
(Sustainable Measures, 2010)
2.4.10 The role of sustainability indicators in resilience theory
An often implied and sometimes stated goal o f community sustainability planning
is to sustain present conditions across the community’s economic, social, and
environmental domains. Early definitions o f sustainability assumed an absolute and static
view o f the system, but a framework to analyze the concept o f sustainability, proposed by
Faber et al. (2005), separated the concept’s components: the artifact (what), goal
30
net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 for cities. Some o f these strategies were also found
to be present in some o f the cities investigated in this study. Activists and government
officials working on sustainability have begun to take into account the central tenets o f
resilience theory— main drivers, thresholds, feedback mechanisms, and slow and fast
variables. These core principles are discussed throughout this dissertation, in particular as
part o f the adaptive learning framework presented in Figure 3.1. As more cities move to
adopt a resilience view, sustainability indicators can be expected to provide a valuable
means to measure and track resilience. In the literature on resilience briefly outlined
above, I did not find examples to date o f operationalizing resilience thinking using
sustainability indicators.
2.4.11 Administrative theory and adaptive governance
A key element o f resilience theory is the role o f adaptive governance in
responding to social-ecological system dynamics (see, e.g., Folke, 2006; Brunner et al.,
2005; Scholz & Stiftel, 2005). As explained by Hatfield-Dodds et al. (2007),
“governance” refers to the institutional arrangements that shape actors’ decisions and
behavior, including the exercise o f authority within groups or organizations (such as
firms or nations), while “management” refers to the processes o f decision making,
coordination, and resource deployment that occur within a given institutional setting,
assuming no change in rules and norms.
Early contributions to the literature on adaptive management (Holling, 1973)
argued the case against centralized expert management (Ludwig et al., 1993; Levin, 1993,
cited in Hatfield-Dodds et al., 2007). Later writings emphasized case studies as a means
o f exploring the implementation and progressive development o f adaptive management
arrangements for specific geographic areas or natural resources. Researchers report that
implementation o f adaptive management is often difficult (e.g., Brunner et al., 2005).
Learning and doing, two key concepts from theories on social-ecological
resilience and adaptive governance (see W alker et al., 2004; Kofinas, 2009) apply to the
present study on community sustainability indicators. As mentioned above, feedback
plays a critical role in adaptive learning, which is integral to the idea o f adaptive
33
management (Kofmas, 2009) at the organizational level as well as at the individual and
group levels (Sessa & London, 2006). Ideally, in the context o f an established
sustainability indicator program, Sis provide feedback by communicating measured
aspects o f local sustainability and, through that process, improve the capacity o f the
community to anticipate, shape, and navigate change. In this way, Sis may provide
essential feedback for organizational and social learning (Sessa & London, 2006) and
provide an important means o f measuring and reporting change in order to identify trends
and assess if implemented policies are meeting a com munity’s sustainability goals.
2.4.12 Bounded rationality and specialization
Two key bodies o f administrative theory are applicable to sustainability indicator
programs and address the establishment and management o f those programs: the
problems o f bounded rationality and specialization. Bounded rationality refers to
limitations inherent in a decision m aker’s ability to know how future conditions will
affect or be affected by a decision (Simonson, 1994). Sustainability indicators could
potentially provide information to extrapolate characteristics o f large and complex
systems that are beyond the limited bounds o f conventional rational assessments. The
notion o f specialization, prevalent in early administrative theory (Simon, 1997), runs
counter to today’s tenets o f sustainability theory, which center on holistic and integrative
thinking (Chapin et al., 2009).
Simon (1997) and Cyert and March (1992) provide important insights into the
ways organizations, such as local governments, make decisions. Considered in light o f
Simon and Cyert and M arch’s contributions to administrative theory, sustainability
indicators and questions surrounding their implementation may be brought into sharper
focus. As Simon (1997) wrote, classical administrative theory considered the following
three principles to be underpinnings o f administrative efficiency:
• specializing the organization according to purpose, process, clientele, or place;
• arranging the organization in a determinate hierarchy o f authority; and
• limiting the span o f control o f any given point in the hierarchy to a small number.
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Organizations need to plan as far into the future as possible, setting long-term
horizons. Static avoidance and command-and-control approaches to social-ecological
systems are unable to manage change and deal with the uncertain or the unexpected
(Shafritz & Ott, 1982). I do not argue against planning as Cyert and M arch’s theory
suggests. However, because of today’s increasingly fast-changing complex social and
ecological systems, I do suggest that given that uncertainty is unavoidable, sustainability
approaches and adaptive learning frameworks designed up front are m ost conducive to
strong sustainability decision making at the local level.
2.5 Summary
Concepts o f sustainability, resilience, adaptive governance, and administrative
theory ground the study o f sustainability indicators and sustainability indicator programs
in local decision making. The literature review reveals that local sustainability indicators
are being used increasingly in the United States. Still, most o f the reviewed writings
address the problem at the theoretical level, with few guidelines available for how to
develop and implement sustainability indicators in a practical manner within the context
of a robust sustainability indicator program.
This study integrates the theories and concepts found in the literature concerning
the development o f sustainability indicators and resilience, adaptive governance, and
administrative theories, providing a starting point from which to explore m y assumption
that community sustainability indicators can be used to improve sustainability decision
making.
37
5 Feedback
Figure 3.1. Community Sustainability Adaptive Learning Framework. A framework for community
sustainability adaptive learning is presented using an input-process-output (IPO) model with seven
components: input (social-ecological system); process (goals, definitions, and domains); sustainability
indicators; resilience thinking; community action; output (capital); and feedback. The arrows labeled 1, 2,
3, and 4 and pointing to the right represent the flow o f information and decision making. Step 5 shows
feedback loops pointing back to learning, monitoring, and reevaluating key assumptions, key relationships,
policies, rules and governance.
(output), resulting in varieties o f capital that will support community resilience. Feedback
loops represent opportunities for learning and monitoring and for re-evaluating the
program, promoting adaptation as a result o f reflection.
Most social-ecological systems represent open realms where material, organisms,
and information flow in, pass through, and flow out (Chapin et al., 2009). Because
processes that occur outside o f the system tend to influence inputs into the system, these
too need to be considered. Global climate change and energy sources such as liquid fossil
fuels may represent ecological inputs to the social-ecological system; factors such as
poverty or family home heating costs may represent inputs on the social side o f the
equation.
3.2.2 Development of goals, definitions, and domains
As discussed in chapter two, arriving at consensus on how to define
“sustainability” and a community’s sustainability goals is important in establishing a
successful local sustainability program. Typically, after a local definition for
sustainability has been developed, three domains are used to categorize sustainability:
economic, environmental, and social/ethical. Although socio-ethical processes are
assumed to include technology and public policy, they are not usually specifically called
out as equal parts o f the basic multiple-domain sustainability framework (Steward &
Kuska, 2011). Steward and Kuska (2011) suggest that when implementing sustainability
at the community level, technology and public policy need to be elevated to the domain
level because these two areas are as important as economic, environmental, and
social/ethical domains when it comes to amplifying and stabilizing feedback effects for
purposes o f enhancing sustainability efforts. As Chapin et al. (2009) point out, any
system and its components are more vulnerable to unexpected change when each
subsystem is managed in isolation. This study therefore focuses on the following five
domains:
• Environmental (natural and man-built infrastructure)
• Socio-cultural (history, conditions, and contexts),
• Technological (appropriate, sustainable)
40
• Economic (the production o f goods and services within a sustainable context, and
financial resources to support protection, trade, operations, and maintenance)
• Public policy (government, or public rules/regulations)
The five-domain sustainability framework can also be used on different scales, ranging
from a single residential building to a region (Steward & Kuska, 2008).
W hether you organize indicators o f sustainability into three or five domains, all
domains need to be integrated and considered holistically for decision making. The value
o f the sustainability framework is that it provides a dashboard (list o f major indicators or
variables) o f components in the social-ecological system that must be viewed together in
order to be considered in an integrated fashion (Scipioni et al., 2009).
3.2.3 Selection of indicators
Eckerberg and M ineur (2003) found that a top-down and bottom-up approach is
the best method for selecting indicators. The combined approach of experts and decision
makers (top-down) and the public at large (bottom-up) ensures that the technical and
scientific information as well as the community normative features are considered.
Although not the main focus o f this study, indicator selection represents a significant step
in developing and implementing sustainability indicators. Figure 3.1 shows five o f 15
criteria for selecting sustainability indicators (Warner, 2006). These criteria establish a
guide for formulating and choosing effective indicators in order to keep the indicator set
manageable and useable by a diverse array o f stakeholders, ranging from broad policy
makers to specialized public interest user groups.
Sustainability indicators, grouped under domains, can be used to enhance social-
ecological systems in several respects, including measuring and monitoring components
o f the social-ecological system and providing feedback. Local sustainability indicators
have normative and objective components (Hak et al., 2007). These are shaped on a
community’s values and beliefs and political, philosophical, and cultural characteristics.
In the cities investigated in this study, after the indicators were selected, they were
usually presented to and reviewed by the city m anager and/or elected officials. O f the
small percentage o f cities that decided to develop sustainability indicator lists, most
41
reached this step, but most did not advance beyond developing lists to using them or
institutionalizing them.
Determining what are the conditions for moving sustainability indicator lists to
implementation and identifying the barriers to moving the sustainability lists to
implementation was a central objective o f this study. In the few cities that have
successfully developed sustainability indicators and that are implementing them, the
indicators fit into some kind of reporting mechanism, such a published report submitted
to the public and decision makers or incorporated into a comprehensive plan, or the
indicators are periodically reviewed internally by city government employees. Feedback
loops, described below in steps three and five o f the IPO model, provide information to
consider for re-evaluating previously selected sustainability indicators.
3.2.4 Integration of resilience thinking into community Sis
Turning to the next component in the IPO model, sustainability indicators are
used to integrate concepts from resilience theory such as main drivers, slow and fast
variables, feedback, and thresholds (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). Sustainability
indicators as feedbacks identify key “slow” variables in terms o f what has changed, is
changing, or is likely to change (Resilience Alliance, 2007). The Resilience A lliance’s
Assessing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: A Workbook fo r Scientists (2007)
suggests a series o f questions that could be used for understanding changes in the system:
Are feedbacks in the system weakening or getting delayed? W hat are the current
directions and rates o f change o f important slow variables? W hat could alter this? W hich
variables influence the rate o f change? Is the system becoming more interconnected?
How does this aspect relate to identified processes and related feedbacks?
The adaptive cycle may be used to understand better the relationship between
indicators and the resilience of the system; it provides a conceptual framework to
facilitate understanding of the ways in which relationships, interactions, and a system’s
physical, ecological, and social processes change through time (Gunderson & Holling,
2002). A specific example o f how the adaptive cycle can be used to understand an issue
can be found in chapter eight, which recounts a short-term electricity “crisis” in Juneau,
42
Alaska, that caused an increase in electrical prices o f 500 percent for a 45-day period,
forcing community-wide adaptive measures (Leighty & Meier, 2011).
To ensure that adaptive management strategies occur, a commitment at the
beginning o f the project from the policy group is included in the model. A fter these
analyses are completed, the report may need revisions, intentional experimentation, and
other learning activity that may require funding.
Indicators help to identify, measure, and better understand the status o f different
types o f community capital. The following four resilience principles have an important
role to play when crafting and working with sustainability indicators:
1. learning to live with change and uncertainty;
2. nurturing diversity o f reorganization and renewal;
3. combining different kinds o f knowledge; and
4. creating opportunities for self-organization (Berkes & Seixas, 2005).
Incorporating these resilience factors, creating political space for experimentation,
combining local and scientific knowledge, matching scales o f ecosystem and governance,
and creating multi-scale governance all represent measures that, up to the time o f this
study, have rarely been utilized by communities in their SIPs. An important purpose o f
the IPO model is to improve our resilience (including adaptive capacity) locally, by
including these factors when developing, operationalizing, and reporting on Sis.
3.2.5 Community action
The community action component in the adaptive learning framework identifies
government programs, community organizations, and individuals, all o f which have
essential roles to play in implementing sustainability indicators. As previously
mentioned, one or all o f these entities m ay have been involved in the prior development
o f the goals and indicators through a bottom-up process. Stakeholders, including the
general public, community residents, decision makers, and community leaders, are
critical to how well this component will work. These people can become aware and learn,
understand, and take action to move a community closer to or away from sustainability.
43
Figure 3.2. Triple-Loop Learning Diagram (from Folke et al., 2009, p. 105). The
diagram shows triple-loop learning, including single-loop (maintaining or adjusting
existing programs and practices), double-loop (evaluating alterations to existing policies),
and triple-loop (considering fundamental changes in norms and institutions) learning.
(Armitage et al., 2007)
4.1 Introduction
Over the past two decades, a growth spurt in city sustainability activity around
issues such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy efficiency, waste
reduction, and alternative energy production has occurred in the United States. In some
cases, sustainability indicators (Sis) have been used to measure and m onitor these issues
(see Kahn, 2006).
The objective o f the data collected in this phase o f the study was to determine
how frequently and in what manner cities in the United States are instituting
sustainability programs and, among those that have such programs, which are utilizing
sustainability indicators and to what degree.
This chapter begins with an overview o f the methodology used by the Natural
Resource Defense Council (NRDC) to formulate its 2009 listing of “ Smarter Cities,”
which provided base-level data for the dissertation, and goes on to report on this study’s
investigation o f 200 American cities to determine how frequently and in what ways cities
in the U.S. are working with sustainability and, in particular, sustainability indicators.
The Internet served as the primary source for information on the 200-city proportional
stratified random sample taken from the 645 cities (N = 645) ranked by the NRDC.
A five-tier categorical system was developed for organizing the information,
trends, and patterns that emerged in the research. The chapter also includes a comparison
o f NRDC’s “Smarter Cities” list to this study’s review o f the 200 cities selected from that
list to determine where the cities using sustainability indicators stood on the NRDC
ranking. The major patterns of SI use, geographic differences, sustainability innovations,
and environmental initiatives are summarized, as is the tendency of cities to “silo”
sustainability indicators, particularly within the social domain.
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4.2 Methods
The study began with a broad investigation o f 200 U.S. cities selected from a list
o f 645 cities (N = 645) with populations o f 50,000 or greater that had been ranked for
sustainability by N R D C ’s Smarter Cities Project. In 2005, the Smarter Cities Project o f
the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), a nongovernmental organization, began
ranking cities in the United States for environmental sustainability and livability (Natural
Resources Defense Council, 2009). In addition to data gathered from its survey efforts
and other investigation, the NRDC employed several resources to produce its “smarter
cities” ranking, including United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
United States Census Bureau (“census”) data sets.
In the last published report issued in 2009, the Smarter Cities Project ranked 645
cities with populations o f over 50,000. Recognizing that different-sized cities face
different issues and possess different resources to deal with those issues, NRDC
organized its rankings into three groups by population, shown in Table 4.1 (Natural
Resources Defense Council, 2009).
Table 4.1 NRDC’s 2008 Smarter Cities Population-Based Ranking
Size Population Range Number o f cities
Small 50,000-99*999 402
Medium 100,000 - 249,999 176
^ J j a r g e .■ 250,000and peater .■■■ .. 67 '•
Total 645
NRDC based its findings on both qualitative and quantitative data. Its study began
with interviews o f mayoral staff or environmental officers. O f the initial 645 cities
surveyed, 160 (24.3%) responded (Natural Resources Defense Council, 2009). Cities not
responding to the survey were assessed using available quantitative data from
government and nonprofit databases. Each o f the cities was scored on one o f three lists
corresponding to population size.
The same nine broad subjective sustainability criteria were applied to each o f the
cities in the three population categories. NRDC assigned points for the presence of
specific sustainability factors, with additional points added for innovation, for a
maximum attainable 100 points (see Appendix 2).
48
Since 2008, NRDC has discontinued the city ranking procedure that laid the
foundation for this dissertation. According to Paul McRandle, the organization found that
“ [djefining the city was difficult and the desire to dig into each issue on balance won out”
(personal communication, January 26, 2011). In other words, NRDC now prefers to focus
more on separate sustainability issues, like transportation and energy, rather than
aggregating issues for overall sustainability.
After selecting and studying sample cities from the NRDC rankings, my study moved
ahead with its own chosen methods, including a five-tier ranking system that evaluated
the extent to which communities were using Sis and SIPs.
A proportional stratified (by population size) random sample was taken from
N RDC’s population categories to select 200 cities to be investigated. The sample
represented approximately one-third o f the cities in each o f NRDC’s three population
groups, as shown in Table 4.1. Percentages o f the stratified sample are shown in
Table 4.2.
Table 4.2 Proportional Stratified Random Survey Sample
City Size NRDC Proportion of Number of
(Stratum) List stratified sample samples
in this study (
Large 67 0.34 20 |
Medium 176 0.33 53 |
Small 402 0.32 127 1
Total 645 (N= 645) n=200 |
Google served as my primary Internet search engine in the initial investigation.
To standardize the research, the following 12 key words and phrases were used to query
each city: “planning,” “long-term planning,” “comprehensive plan,” “master plan,”
“name o f city,” “economic,” “indicators,” “energy,” “sustainability,” “environmental,”
“climate change.”
The results showed a set o f cities to be engaged in a broad array o f environmental
activities, such as recycling and energy conservation, some o f which are placed under the
banner of “sustainability.” Other terms, listed below, were also given various definitions,
raising questions such as are “quality o f life” indicators or “smart growth” initiatives
synonymous with “sustainability”? The investigation encountered a variety o f terms used
49
by cities to describe their environmental and sustainability activities. The most frequently
mentioned terms included “smart cities,” “smart growth,” “green community,” “green
building,” “green energy,” “sustainable community,” “environmental sustainability,”
“sustainable energy,” “sustainability,” “sustainability plan,” “comprehensive plan,”
“visioning,” “well-being,” and “quality o f life.”
A close investigation o f the available materials on each city was required to
associate each city’s terminology with ongoing activities on the ground. The types o f
indicators found in my web-based research to be most frequently used by communities to
measure sustainability include economic, transportation, energy, and environmental.
Some communities that take a holistic approach use terms such as “quality o f life,”
“green,” “well-being,” and “smart development.” The word “sustainability” tended to
appear more frequently in relatively recent land-use planning documents, strategic plans,
and letters and memos from mayors and other city decision makers. Still, only a small
minority o f cities (less than 10 percent o f the 200 researched) use sustainability in the
title o f a formal organizational unit.
Most cities had a search engine function that was used in this study to search city
documents such as comprehensive plans, master plans, ordinances, and policy statements
for information about the city’s sustainability activities. Materials from the Smarter Cities
project and city websites served as the main sources o f information. Additional
information was found in university studies on some o f the more popularly known
sustainability efforts, such as those in Seattle, Washington, and Jacksonville, Florida.
A spreadsheet was used to record information retrieved from Internet searches
and other sources for the 200 cities. As patterns emerged from the information collected,
the spreadsheet was populated with data organized into nine areas, including the city’s
ranking on the five-tier scale I established for ranking the overall level o f each city’s SI
development (see Table 4.3).
This first phase o f the study determined which o f the 200 sample cities used
sustainability indicators (Sis) in any manner. Cities whose websites revealed no
relationship to sustainability indicators or similar quantifiers were recorded in the
50
“absent” tier (see below). Those whose websites or other sources revealed engagement
with Sis or similar indicators (e.g., quality o f life indicators where a holistic approach
that included social, environmental, and economic indicators was taken) were counted as
having Sis.
Those cities showing evidence o f engagement with Sis were studied in more
depth to reveal the extent to which sustainability indicators had been institutionalized in
local government decision making. A city showing an entity such as a Sustainability
Coordinator, Office o f Sustainability, Commission or Task Force on Sustainability, etc.,
was recorded under the column heading “Institution.” For cities that had instituted
innovative means, such as original software or the use o f a creative organizational
structure, the heading “Innovation” was used. Cities involved in energy conservation,
climate change initiatives, recycling, or alternative energy production were listed under
the category “Environmental Initiatives.” The five-tiered SI categorical system was used
to rank each city according to the degree to which it had developed Sis and put in place a
sustainability indicator program.
The five tiers— ranging from “absent” (cities without any sustainability indicator
activity), to partial, or “disaggregated” programs, to “aggregated” programs, to programs
that have “operationalized” Sis, and, finally, those that have gone on to use indicators for
monitoring sustainability— revealed patterns and trends in American cities’ development
o f Sis and the relationship between a city’s Sis and its NRDC sustainability ranking. The
five tiers thus provided the general framework for organizing the study’s empirical
findings.
Table 4.3 Five Tiers of Community' Sustainability Indicator Use. Each o f the 200 cities was
categorized using this five-tier system based on the level o f sustainability indicator (SI) use,
4.3 Results
4.3.1 Tier 1 - Sls/SIP absent
This category comprises communities that have no Sis, no sustainability plan, no
sustainability program, and no sustainability goals or objectives. It includes the cities in
which my research discovered neither use o f the word “sustainability” nor other language
commonly associated with sustainability. Comprehensive planning is perform ed by many
o f these cities, in which traditional indicators, such as economy and human health, are
norms. Based on the study’s web-based investigation, most small cities— 95 out o f the
125 small cities studied— fall into this category. Among the sampled small cities, some
had disaggregated (9), relatively few (11) had aggregated programs, (10) had operational
Sis and none had monitored Sis.
4.3.2 Tier 2 - Sustainability efforts disaggregated
Tier 2 communities have partial or disaggregated sustainability activity. Among
the goals o f any sustainability effort are that it be overarching, integrative, and holistic
(Maclaren, 1996). This category includes communities that have sustainability indicators
that include some but not all major elements o f a social-ecological system, such as
economic, social, and environmental. Some communities mentioned Sis that could be
considered to be a partial or “disaggregated” sustainability program that usually included
the economic and environmental dimension o f sustainability, such as energy
consumption, solid waste, recycling, or economic activity. Overall, cities in this category
(24) used indicators independently from each other with no evidence o f integration.
4.3.3 Tier 3 - Sis aggregated and SIP present
Tier 3 comprises communities that have developed an overall sustainability plan
with goals and use indicators to measure the totality o f sustainability in the context o f an
integrative, participatory, and long-term planning system. Communities that fall into this
category have aggregated sustainability goals but have not yet operationalized the
indicators. The City and Borough o f Juneau, the subject o f the case study presented in
chapter eight, falls into this tier because it has goals and draft indicators that have not
been operationalized. The number o f cities is (24) or 12% o f the total.
52
6 33 95 134 <67%)
6 9 9 24 (12%)
6 / / 24 (12%)
Tier 4 (Aggregated. Operational ■ 0 4 10 14 (07%)
Tier 5 (Aligned, Operational, & 3 1 0 4 <02%)
Monitored)
Total 21 54 125 200
4.3.6 NRDC’s Top 10 Smarter Cities compared with survey cities
Table 4.5 shows the relationship between N RDC’s top 10 ranked cities and this
study’s research results by population and SI five-tier ranking (Natural Resources
53
Defense Council, 2009). Overall, the five tiers developed for this dissertation correspond
well to NRDC’s top 10 smartest cities, in that each o f the three highest-tier cities from the
200 reviewed in this study— Portland, Oregon, Huntsville, Alabama, and Fayetteville,
Arkansas— were ranked among N R D C ’s top 10 smartest cities for sustainability. Table
4.4 shows 28 o f the 200 cities in this study ranked in tier four or five. It was beyond the
scope of this paper to study the implications o f SIPs on sustainability. These findings
suggest the need for more analysis o f that question.
Table 4.5 NRDC’s Top 10 Smarter Cities Compared with This Study’s SI Tiers.
NRDC’s top 10 cities with population size categories listed with the five-tier ranking.
Portland, OR, Huntsville, AL, and Fayetteville, AR ranked in the top 10 by the current study
(Natural Resources Defense Council, 2009).
NRDC Large City SI Medium city SI Small City JSI
Top Cities 250,000 + Ranking 200k to 249 k Ranking 50 k to 199k Ranking
1 Seattle, WA Madison, W1 Bellingham, WA
. 2 San Francisco, CA Santa Rosa, CA Mountain View, CA
3 Portland, OR TierS Fort Collins, CO Norwalk, CT
Oakland, CA Springfield, IL Sarasota, FL
San Josd, CA Eugene, OR Burnsville, MN .....
Austin, TX Spokane, WA Fayetteville, AR Tier 4
Sacramento, CA fiunte#8le;AL Tier 5 Mission Viejo,CA.
Boston, MA Scottsdale, AZ Arlington Heights, IL
Denver, CO Tallahassee, FL Nashua, NH
Chicago, IL Laredo, TX Redmond, WA
The review o f the 200-city sample found that, as shown in Table 4.6, the presence
or absence o f sustainability indicators correlates significantly (Chi square = 22.4) to a
city’s population. This finding is not surprising, given that larger cities have the
advantage o f economies o f scale and consequently possess greater capacity for taking on
new programs. The research showed medium-sized cities engaging in proportionally
more innovative activity. For example, eight out o f 41 large cities (19%) use Sis, as
compared to 11 out o f 166 small cities (6%). The research also found that 10 out o f the
41 large cities studied (24%) have institutionalized sustainability in some way; in
contrast, sustainability measures (not always including sustainability indicators) have
been institutionalized in only 20 o f the 166 small cities. As shown in Table 4.6, these
findings bear strong statistical significance (P value = 0.00043).
Table 4.6 City Size and V ariable Expectations. The chi square (22.4) calculation shows
a strong significance (P=0.00043) between large cities and cities with Sis.
Variables Large cities Medium cities Small cities Total
Expected Observed Expected Observed Expected Observed
Sis Present 3.35 8 7.10 5 13.55 11 24
Institution 6.69 10 14.20 18 27.10 20 48
Innovation 3.90 3 8.29 14 15.81 11 28
Environ. 27.05 20 57.41 50 109.54 124 194
Initiatives
Total 41 87 166 294
4.3.8 Prevalence of environm ental initiatives
Almost all o f the 200 cities examined indicated on their websites some level o f
engagement in environmental and conservation activities. Beyond the governm ent’s
website, evidence o f environmental projects or activities was sometimes found in
separate government documents or on other nongovernmental websites that discussed a
city’s activities. This category was designed to distinguish cities simply undertaking
some environmental or conservation activities from those with sustainability goals or
sustainability indicator programs. A city may be conducting environmental and
conservation activities, e.g., climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy
conservation, green building initiatives, or waste reduction and recycling, in the absence
o f sustainability goals, indicators, or a program. There is evidence that smaller cities
55
oftentimes lack the capacity to establish a new program such as a sustainability indicator
program or to take on even small programs that can achieve high enough visibility to gain
substantial public support.
4.3.9 Government sustainability offices
A few local governments (11 or 5.5%) have adjusted their organizational
structures to add an office or program o f sustainability (see Table 4.7).
Table 4.7 Sustainability Program and Institutional Change. The frequency o f cities
reporting sustainability programs and institutional change are listed in four categories.
Only 5.5 percent o f the 200 cities surveyed have established projects or programs. A
lower percentage of cities have sustainability coordinators, a committee or taskforce, or
have established a partnership with a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Sustainability Program and Institutional Change Percent and Number
of cities n =200
1) Projects or Programs 5.5 CD
2) Sustainability Coordinators 3.5 (7)
3) Committee or Taskforce 3.0 (7)
4) Partnerships with NGOs 2.5 (5)
Governments reporting programs or projects may or may not have developed and
implemented sustainability indicators, and there is not enough evidence from this study to
determine if the projects or programs are applying sustainability across the entire
government or if efforts remain based in a single program.
The City o f Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has established a sustainability
office in the M ayor’s Office, provides an example o f a city that has made an institutional
change to support its sustainability efforts (City o f Albuquerque, 2011). Sometimes the
title o f an existing department has been changed to reflect the city’s involvem ent in
sustainability work. For example, the City o f Portland’s former Bureau o f Planning is
now the Bureau o f Planning and Sustainability, with the bureau’s objectives having been
expanded to include “promoting integrated land use planning’’ (City o f Portland SEA
Report, 2010). In some cases, a temporary body, such as a task force or commission, has
been established to develop sustainability indicators and address sustainability issues, in
general.
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Since 2008, several cities have taken advantage o f United States Department o f
Energy stimulus funding to create a new position frequently referred to as Sustainability
Coordinator (U.S. Department o f Energy, 2008). This position is normally stationed in a
city’s planning, public works, or environmental services department, although some cities
have set up the new position in a new office that reports directly to the Mayor.
A thorough review o f city organizational structures and reports and other relevant
documents available on the Internet revealed that, while some city department
organizational structures have changed to support sustainability efforts, m ost have not.
Less than 20 percent o f the cities reviewed use the word “sustainability” or words that
characterize sustainability, like “integrated planning,” on their websites or in their
comprehensive plans. On the other hand, a few cities, such as Fayetteville, Arkansas,
have established a separate office o f sustainability, which coordinates and promotes
principles and programs for sustainability. The programs o f three of the cities found in
this study to be engaged in the highest levels o f sustainability work— Fayetteville,
Portland, and Albuquerque— are discussed in depth in the next chapter.
4.3.10 Tier rankings by region
Is there a relationship between geographic regions and city SI tiers? Several
geographic approaches have been developed by various governmental agencies and
private sector organizations that divide the United States into regions. The United States
Census Bureau separates the country into four regions: West, South, M idwest, and
Northeast (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). Frequency distribution o f cities with sustainability
indicators is organized by SI tier into these four regions in Table 4.8.
The Midwest region earned the highest average five-tier ranking (2.49) and the
Northeast, the lowest (1.33). Appendix 4 contains a listing by region o f all 200 cities
reviewed in the first part of the study. Overall, the W est and Midwest regions contain the
greatest number o f highest-tier sustainability performers.
4.3.11 Integration o f social and ecological domains
A central tenet o f sustainability involves the integration of social-ecological
system domains or, in this case, the community’s social, ecological, and economic,
technology, and policy sectors. Only 12 communities out o f the 200 investigated in the
initial phase o f the study have stated as a goal the integration o f social and ecological
domains (see Appendix 4). Specifically revealing is the lack o f communities that have
integrated social indicators and ecological and economic domains as part o f their
sustainability framework. Cities’ non-integration, or “silo-ing,” of the social domain
(programs) revealed in the research on local governments aligns with other anecdotal
evidence uncovered in the study. Results from one o f the largest social surveys, the
Gallup-Healthways “Well-being Index,” which reports on the social and hum an health o f
communities, have not been integrated into city sustainability. The Index represents one
of the most extensive initiatives o f its kind, with 1,000 Americans polled every day on
their attitudes about social well-being (K. Bell, personal communication, June 17, 2010).
There was a general lack o f discussion o f social-ecological systems in the
sustainability research and in the information available on specific cities. The ecological
side o f the social-ecological equation is much more developed in both o f these research
realms (Folke, 2006). The literature is just recently beginning to recognize and address
social resilience in its full complexity.
4.3.12 Innovations
The study’s review o f city government websites found several innovative
programs and approaches being pursued to advance sustainability. Organizational
structures using the word sustainability, web pages with sustainability indicators or
benchmarks, and sustainability-related projects or programs were all reviewed to find any
innovative programs that have been developed for implementing sustainability indicators.
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Comprehensive planning has been used since the early 1900s, since the appearance o f
“The Chicago Plan” (Costonis, 1972). Most o f the cities surveyed in the present study
engage in comprehensive planning— usually under laws or regulations requiring them to
do so. The standard comprehensive plan will generally map out a vision and direction for
land use, utilities, environmental preservation or restoration, transportation, housing, and
other aspects of the built environment (Innes, 1996).
Based on the cities surveyed in this study, during the past five years, an increasing
number of U.S. cities have begun to add a new section on sustainability to their
comprehensive plans or have changed the plan’s title to “Sustainability Plan.” A few
communities that have switched from comprehensive planning to sustainability planning,
including Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Portland, Oregon, appear to be explicitly
seeking a more holistic planning approach. By taking a resilience approach, these cities
identify main drivers and slow and fast variables; through this new holistic lens,
additional sustainability and resilience indicators can be expected to emerge. In some
cases, (e.g., Portland OR, and Jacksonville, FL), this study found that among the cities
with the most developed sustainability programs, discussed in chapter six, feedback is
already changing policy decisions.
Sustainability plans differ from comprehensive plans in that they associate
planning objectives with sustainability, generally using measures or indicators. Because
sustainability goals tend to be broad and overarching, applying measures and indicators
can help a community to operationalize sustainability, both by providing markers to
assess progress toward goals and by using indicators to frame communications among
city officials and between a government and the public.
Changing a planning docum ent’s title from “comprehensive plan” to
“sustainability plan” may in some cases be largely symbolic, but some o f the renamed
plans were found to have real teeth. For example, as reported b y the City Planner from
Fayetteville, Arkansas, that city’s sustainability plan included a full program, with
sustainability goals, objectives, measureable indicators, and a reporting mechanism.
60
internal progress, but to compare the city’s progress to other cities’ performance
(University o f Arkansas, 2012).
4.4 Summary o f Findings
The following list summarizes the major findings o f the study’s web-based
investigation o f 200 U.S. cities:
• A large majority o f the cities investigated did not have Sis (67%).
• A significant relationship was found to exist between SI Tiers and city size.
• Few (5.5%) o f the cities have adjusted their organizational structures to add an
office or program o f sustainability.
• Sis and SIPs were found more frequently in cities in the Western and Midwest
regions o f the United States.
• Dashboards are being used by four cities with highly operationalized Sis.
• A small percentage (6.6%) o f the cities had a stated goal of integrating social and
ecological domains.
4.5 Discussion
Some communities have begun to invest in their productive base and inclusive
wealth pursuant to sustainability indicator-based measures by, for example, increasing the
number o f green buildings, the degree o f energy conservation, new alternative fuel
production, etc. Learning about the relationships between economic and social programs
and then developing measurements reflective o f those relationships represents a resilient
and adaptive learning process.
One o f the most difficult things to accept if you are a local decision maker is that
all policies are by their nature experimental (Lee, 1993); acknowledgement o f this reality
will lead a community to strengthen its adaptive capacity. Even though policies tend to
always be in a state o f flux, because government at the local level is expected to work,
risks are rarely taken. W hile state and federal decision makers may enjoy a degree o f
distance from their constituents, local officials make decisions— whether those concern
sewer lines or school budgets— that personally affect people they run into on the street
62
every day. Elected and other local government officials can thus hardly be blamed for
wanting to play it safe. The problem for the volunteer activist working on a city’s
sustainability plan is that “safe” often means “short-term.”
Another important aspect o f learning stems from past experiences, which create
“path dependence.” Path dependence, by which current dynamics become linked to past
events, lays a foundation for the future (Pierson, 2000). An example can be seen in the
th
ways the Great Depression o f the early-20 century continued to influence economic
decisions made in households 40 years later (Chapin et al., 2009). As George Santayana
famously said, “Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.” Resilience
theory sees evaluation and reflection as part o f an expansive (rather than limiting)
learning process that can lead a community away from past patterns— in other words, that
can lead a community to adapt and innovate.
The U.S. cities investigated in this study generally showed signs o f at least some
innovation, including experimenting with new organizational structures, new positions,
and programs for addressing things like climate change and energy conservation, as well
as measuring and monitoring trends. Nevertheless, the study’s literature review and
research finding that less than six percent o f U.S. cities have instituted sustainability
programs, much less innovative programs, reveals a scarcity o f true learning communities
in the U.S. when it comes to planning for the long term.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that the earliest climate change
initiatives grew out o f local governance (U.S. Conference o f Mayors, 2009). The first
sustainability indicators also resulted from grassroots efforts, with the state and federal
governments following the lead o f municipal experiments. Unlike the federal
government, cities are required to balance their budgets. In an effort to get the greatest
impact for the dollars, cities often are forced to innovate. Accountability also can drive
innovation, as individual city leaders are forced to find ways to meet the needs o f their
constituent neighbors. Thus, at the local level, innovation often springs from necessity.
The early community sustainability indicator success stories discussed in this
chapter (Jacksonville, FL. Santa M onica CA, Albuquerque NM, and Truckee M eadows,
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NV) succeeded in establishing goals, frameworks, and indicators. Based on the results o f
the broad survey o f 200 cities and the literature, these four early success stories are now
among the few cities that have well developed sustainability indicator programs. In
several communities that developed Sis subsequently, the indicators were not
implemented, and some were abandoned. The broad survey o f 200 cities indicates that,
during the first decade o f the 21st century, the early generation o f community Sis
expanded and additional cities emerged as second-generation SI communities. This
generation was armed with important new technologies, including websites to
communicate program elements and activities more quickly and clearly and GIS mapping
to aid in expressing tabular SI lists with corresponding geographic information. The
results of this study show that some o f the most significant advances by sustainability
programs include more integration and the use o f holistic approaches, increased federal
funding, the use o f dashboards, and the establishment o f city sustainability offices with
overarching responsibility for community sustainability. As stated earlier, less than
10 percent o f the cities studied have SIPs that are actually utilized by their local
governments. Based on the more recent city documents, that number, however, is
increasing. The communities that ranked high among the five-tier sustainability indicator
development categories also displayed evidence o f organizational learning by including
goal setting and explicit monitoring, with formal feedback loops and experimentation in
alignment with local planning.
4.6 Conclusion
The present study found that communities that have attempted to develop
sustainability indicators have generally been successful in creating lists o f indicators
under some kind o f sustainability framework that enables a community to identify,
describe, and translate some o f the pieces o f the sustainability complex. In a few cities,
local indicator projects have enjoyed widespread public involvement and received ample
media attention. However, with the exception o f a few projects, lists o f indicators have
yet to become tools that have been taken up in earnest by decision makers. In most cities,
sustainability indicators today are much more likely to be found in a file draw er or on a
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community’s website than in a decision m aker’s meeting packet. The problem o f dormant
SIPs holds a central place in the case study presented in chapter eight.
Perhaps one reason that indicator projects have yet to be implemented by the
majority of communities who have undertaken the task o f formulating them is the
“silo”-ing tendency o f the indicators themselves. Decision makers might be more likely
to integrate indicators into their work if the indicators themselves took a m ore integrated
approach across sectors. For example, if an indicator for education, such as “high school
drop-out rates,” was explicitly shown to affect another indicator such as “teen
pregnancy,” decision makers might show more interest. An abstract environmental
indicator for “rise in air temperature” might get more attention if it were tied explicitly to
a “depth o f permafrost” indicator, and then connected to economic indicators showing
anticipated decline as a result o f truncated tundra travel seasons for machinery critical to
expansion o f oil and gas exploration in areas o f the Arctic. Improving the quality o f
individual indicators in the future and presenting them as integrated variables will
perhaps inspire decision makers to utilize indicators more often and in real ways.
Sustainability indicators should, by definition, capture essential elements o f
sustainability. Effective Sis must be dynamic in order to match up with a com munity’s
values, which change over time. Currently, most indicator projects do not elucidate
relationships between systems that are by their nature interconnected. M ost SI projects
consist o f lists o f indicators grouped below three to twelve headings. The review o f city
documents found that, with the exception o f a few projects, no analysis o f the
relationships among indicators accompanies a community’s indicator list. Indicators thus
tend to more closely resemble a stand o f planted trees than a complex old growth forest.
While many cities in the U.S. are currently engaged in sustainability projects in
some manner, the approach taken by most communities interested in developing indicator
projects to date has been to group issues into individual indicators or domains, without
holistic or overarching analysis. This approach o f specialization reflects a more general
traditional shortcoming in the field o f environmental management, where issues have
long been institutionalized into separate programs. Not until the early-1970s did
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ecologists and other scientists begin to discuss broad interlinked issues such as
cumulative impacts and watershed approaches. The literature search and other research o f
the 200-city sample discovered only 18 cities that had managed to integrate sustainability
indicators into governance— and that, among those, only in four cities had sustainability
indicators become fully operationalized.
However, the research also tells us that communities and academies across the
country are now busy looking into the problem o f unsustainable policies by undertaking
research using systems analyses, modeling, and other tools to link and interconnect
separate indicators. Applying advanced technology, researchers are exploring ways in
which modeling and other ways o f analyzing systems might be deployed to ferret out,
understand, and manipulate linkages among indicators. For example, dashboards with
sustainability indicators, such as that employed by the City o f Fayetteville, provide a
method o f viewing several programs at once, thereby presenting an opportunity for
decision makers and the public to compare and contrast program trends information.
With new discoveries o f interdisciplinarity, we can begin to make a shift away from
describing and monitoring separate occurrences to holistic sustainability assessment.
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statistics, public administration, or social sciences, and all with many years o f experience
in qualitative or quantitative survey research, pretested the questionnaire. Each provided
comments on the survey’s clarity, format, word choice, and length, and this feedback was
used to modify the questionnaire.
5.2.2 Final survey instrument
The questionnaire consisted o f 40 questions, including multiple choice, yes/no,
and open-ended questions (Appendix 5). There were 178 possible answers, including the
open-ended questions. Questions were organized into the 11 categories listed in
Table 5.1.
Table 5.1 Survey Question Categories. The survey questionnaire
included 40 questions in the following 11 categories.___________
Categories
1 Introduction
(informant's background and informed consent)
2 Terms (used for sustainability) and development of Sis
3 Holistic measurement among city departments
4 Barriers to development and implementation of Sis
5 Data sources used - local, state, and federal
6 City decision making
7 Beyond city government - involvement of residents,
private companies, and NGOs
8 Public participation - degree of public involvement
9 Funding - sources of funding for Sis
10 Type of indicators - top 3 environmental, social,
economic, public policy, and technology
11 Related issues - reasons for remaining in or leaving
community, etc.
5.2.3 Arrangement of responses to individual questions
For convenience in conducting statistical tests, responses to No and Yes questions
were ranked respectively as 1 and 2. Questions with more than one choice were given
ascending values such as 1 - 5 for Likert scaling. Questions with multiple choices were
arranged in ascending value based on relevance to the study’s assumptions regarding the
role o f sustainability indicators in local decision making.
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Table 5.2 Social and Economic Indicators and SI Five-Tier Ranking for 38 Cities
Population Gini College Employment j Bond Median % Below SI
Index Rating Age Poverty Tier
I
Large Cities
Albuquerque, NM 515,107 .446 32.2 67.5 6 34.3 11.2 5
Anchorage, AK 280,389 .406 32.3 74.3 7 32.2 5.8 2
Kansas City, MO 474,396 .465 29.8 69.0 3 34.9 12.6 3
Lexington-F., KY 287,537 .486 39.0 69.0 6 33.4 10.4 1
Portland, OR 548,988 .467 40.2 70.1 6 35.5 11.0 5
Santa Ana, CA 336,988 .398 11.4 69.0 3 28.2 14.8 3
St. Louis, M0 355,078 .481 14.7 64.7 5 34.5 21.0 1
Medium Cities
Hampton, VA 145,903 .400 21.2 67.7 7 34.0 9.9 1
Huntsville, AL 172,583 .484 38.4 64.9 7 37.5 10.7 5
Newport News, VA 192,635 .411 22.9 69.8 6 31.9 10.8 1
N. Las Vegas, NV 205,483 .358 15.0 71.2 4 29.5 8.6 4
Savannah, GA 131,872 .487 23.5 59.5 5 32.3 16.6 1
Sioux Falls, SD 151,646 .441 29.7 74.3 6 33.8 7.1 4
Thornton, CO 110,768 .350 25.4 76.6 6 31.8 6.6 2
Torrance, CA 139,976 .420 43.2 66.0 6 41.0 4.4 2
Waterbury, CT 106,909 .459 16.2 64.4 5 34.3 17.2 1
Small cities
Apple Valley, CA 68,298 .462 16.0 55.8 8 34.9 14.6 1
Bloomington, IL 72,289 0.587 44.7 72.3 5 33.2 8.9 3
Bradenton, FL 53,663 .410 22.3 58.2 5 43.1 9.7 1
Brick, TWN, NJ 78,321 .413 25.3 65.1 6 41.1 3.6 1
Bristol, CT 60,869 .382 19.6 69.7 7 39.6 5.6 1
Buena Park, CA 78.689 .378 25.0 66.1 1 34.1 7.2 3
Carmel, IN 66,654 .448 63.4 72.0 6 37.3 2.4 1
Deerfield B., FL 75,025 .440 22.6 61.4 7 42.2 11.8 1
Dothan, AL 64,734 .480 23.4 60.7 7 37.9 12.7 1
Encinitas, CA 59,818 .464 55.1 70.3 7 40.4 4.7 1
Euless, TX 52,134 .386 30.4 78.1 6 33.8 8.9 4
Fayetteville, AR 72,828 0.55 43.5 68.0 5 28.4 12.9 4
Gulfport, MS 70,238 .458 18.8 61.9 3 33.5 14.1 1
Hoffman Est IL 51,895 .372 42.1 73.5 7 36.5 9.9 3
Largo, FL 73,966 .402 19.0 54.7 4 48.6 8.9 1
Lorain, OH 70,090 .443 11.1 62.3 8 36.7 20.5 1
Medford, MA 55,633 .408 38.7 67.7 6 37.8 5.5 1
Midland, TX 103,265 .498 26.8 67.4 8 33.2 9.9 1
Minnetonka, MN 50,175 .436 53.0 71.1 7 43.3 2.8 1
Pine Bluff, AR 51,142 .471 18.8 57.7 5 33.7 22.2 1
Piscataway, NJ 52,112 .372 45.0 67.0 6 32.6 2.8 1
Wayne, TWN, NJ 53,812 .419 44.1 62.4 5 42.1 2.3% 1
*Source for city economic and social data: Population (city population), Gini Index (income inequity -
distribution o f income and deviation from equal distribution), college (% with 4 year college or more),
employment (% employed), median age, and poverty (% below poverty level) is the U.S. Census Bureau,
2005-2009 American Community Survey found online at:
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
** Source o f the Bond Rating is the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, Electronic Municipal market
Access, http://emma.msrb.org/. The Bond Rating was assigned a value between land 8.
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Table 5.3 Cities’ Correlated Social and Economic Characteristics. The top number is the
correlation coefficient and the bottom number is the p value. Population (0.0012),
employment (0.0054) and median age (0.0248) have significant P values.
Pop Gini College Employ Bond Median % SI
Index Rating Age Below five-
Poverty tiers
Population
Gini 0.1048
Index 0.5312
College 0.0876 0.1191
Education 0.6012 0.2309
Employ 0.2034 0.2051 0.4181
0.2207 0.2166 0.0090
Bond -0.1872 0.0874 022000 0.0985
Ranking 0.2603 0.6025 0.2287 0.5565
Median -0.3126 -0.1314 0.1944 -0.394 0.1886
Age 0.0560 0.4317 0.2422 0.0143 0.2320
% Below 0.2249 0 3835 -0.6452 -0.4414 - 0.1112 -0.3467
Poverty 0.1746 *0.0175 0.0001 0.0055 0.5061 0.0330
SI Five-Tier 0.5045 0.0650 0.1391 0.4425 0.1959 -0.3636 -0.0109
0.0012 0.6083 0.4050 0.0054 0.2345 0.0248 0.9480
Community size
The five tiers o f sustainability indicator development presented above in Table 5.4
show a significant correlation (0.0012) with city population. This finding is internally
consistent with findings in the previous chapter indicating that, among the 200 large cities
surveyed, larger cities have disproportionately more Sis (Tiers 2 - 5 ) than do medium and
smaller cities. An average o f the five-tier ranking for the cities in each size group— small
(1.54), medium (2.33), and large (2.85)— also indicates the larger the city the higher the
five-tier ranking. This finding is consistent with the statement on N RDC’s Smarter Cities
Program website to the effect that larger cities have more capacity to take on new
programs:
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Cities o f various sizes face different problems and have vastly different resources
to draw upon. To reflect these differences, we separated our cities into three
population categories. Cities with greater resources to draw from perform ed better
across all o f the criteria, but that is not an indication that small and medium cities
suffer from greater environmental degradation. Larger cities are able to build
more green-certified buildings, provide a wider range o f energy initiatives to their
populations and offer more transportation alternatives— factors that enhanced
their scores. (Natural Resources Defense Council, 2009)
Employment and median age
Table 5.4 also shows a positive correlation between SI tier ranking and city
employment rates (0.0054), as well as a negative correlation between tier ranking and
median age (0.0248). Perhaps SI activity and strong employment rates both correlate to a
strong economy wherein higher tax revenues are collected by the city, increasing the
resources available to implement programs. Also, more SI activity in cities w ith relatively
high employment may correlate to a community’s ability to innovate, since both SI
programs and robust job creation require innovative approaches. The SI tier correlation
with lower median age could be associated with a higher tendency for innovation among
younger populations. Also, higher employment may attract a younger population seeking
job opportunities.
Universities
Although not correlated with the percentage o f college educated individuals per
se, all cities in the high-population category are home to one or more colleges compared
with the median and small-population cities that do not all have colleges w ithin their
municipalities. Although colleges tend to attract researchers, cultivate knowledge
production, and generate innovative programs, certain communities with universities may
or may not be more amenable philosophically to sustainability indicator projects and
programs.
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The percentage (15.8 % or six) o f the 38 surveyed cities that are using Sis is relatively
close to the percentage (12% or 48) o f the 200 cities found in chapter four to have SI
activity, suggesting internal validity in sampling methods and results.
5.3.3 Response patterns and median comparisons
O f the 38 cities responding to the survey, six reported using or developing
sustainability indicators and 32 reported not using Sis. For the 40 questions included on
the survey, a total o f 176 responses were possible; however, respondents who indicated
their cities did not use sustainability indicators were not asked a follow-up series o f
questions about SI use while those answering that threshold question in the affirmative
were given an opportunity to answer more questions. As a result, representatives from
cities with SI projects answered more questions than those from cities indicating they did
not use Sis. All respondents, whether they answered having Sis or not, had 67
opportunities to provide responses.
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Table 5.5. Response Median Comparisons Summary (Overall Contingency Table). This
table shows the results of a nonparametric median comparison statistical test used to determine
if there were significant differences between the frequency of responses by six cities with Sis
and that of responses by the 32 cities without Sis. The six cities with Sis responded to
61 questions above the median response level. The 32 cities without Sis provided six responses
above the median. This indicates a significant difference in the frequency o f responses from the
six cities with Sis compared to frequency o f responses from the 32 cities without Sis.
M edian response is the Cities with Cities without T o ta l# o f
median value o f the possible Sis Sis Responses
answers.
Number o f responses: 6 61 67
Less than /= Median
Num ber o f responses: 61 6 67
Greater than Median
Totals Possible Responses 67 67 134
P Value = 0.005 Test-Statistic (Chi-Sq) = 90.27
The difference between the median response o f the six cities with Sis and the 32 cities
without Sis shows there is a difference in the pattern o f responses to the questions
answered by each group. The difference is highly significant, as evidenced by the P value
o f 0.005.
5.3.4. Factors impeding and supporting SI development
Fourteen of the 32 cities that responded to the questionnaire that they do not
measure sustainability provided written comments about why they did not.
• 6 are in the process o f developing Sis.
• 4 are partially or indirectly measuring sustainability
• 1 cited lack o f funding
• 1 asked if [sustainability] cannot be defined, how can you measure it?
• 1 referred to sustainability as something else
• 1 noted a state legal prohibition against smart growth based on
sustainability issues
The surveys’ discovery that several o f the 38 cities have SI projects coming on line or
have set sustainability goals supports the finding in the literature review that the number
o f Sis and SIPs in the U.S. is increasing. Respondents’ comments, like those excerpted
below, reveal a variety o f drivers to be pushing local sustainability efforts forward.
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Prompted by climate action plan: [We are] in the process o f preparing a Climate
Action Plan, which will provide a baseline fo r fu tu re measurement to
sustainability.
Prompted by process o f defining: Sustainability ju s t became a community goal. I
anticipate measurements or evaluation o f sustainability in the near future.
Prompted by sustainability language in comprehensive plan: Our 2020
Comprehensive Plan has many policies that deal with sustainability. In the future,
we will be measuring sustainability.
Prompted by law: By state law HB 697, all cities in Florida must adopt policies in
their comprehensive plans regarding climate change and smart growth.
In the following sections, survey results are arranged by respondents’ and cities’
background sustainability information (including, e.g., sustainability-related activity and
stages o f defining sustainability), barriers to SIPs, and attributes of SIPs. Crosstabs and
cluster analyses were used to illustrate patterns and correlations found in questionnaire
responses, including in comments received in response to open-ended questions.
5.3.5 Sustainability-related activity/interest
Two background questions were asked to ascertain the amount o f time the
respondent spends on sustainability issues (as those issues were defined by the
respondent) and to identify the sustainability issues that are important to the respondent
and to the government and overall community in the respondent’s city.
Informants from the 38 cities indicated that much or most o f their time was spent
dealing with sustainability issues; for some, sustainability-related activities formally
occupied a large portion o f their jo b description. Over 90% o f the officials in the six
cities that reported using sustainability indicators reported that Sis are considered by local
government to be useful.
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SIPs reported having arrived at a definition. This finding suggests a correlation between
cities that have solved the threshold issue o f terminology and those that have been able to
move their programs forward. Comments from respondents answering yes to having a
definition were grouped into four categories. Based on the respondents’ comments,
together with data from the review o f 200 city websites and associated documents
reported in chapter four, cities’ definitions o f sustainability fall into four general
categories: “nonintegrated,” “in process,” “integrated,” and “integrated-plus.”
Nonintegrated definitions
Two o f the written comments regarding the definition o f sustainability reported
on the 38-city surveys indicated that the definition o f sustainability can be found in goal
statements for respondents’ city departments, with different sustainability definitions
applying in different offices o f the same city. Typically, cities with nonintegrated
definitions use some iteration o f the Brundtland Commission definition o f sustainability:
“meet[ing] the needs and aspirations o f the present without compromising the ability to
meet those o f the future” (para. 49).
Survey responses indicated that where different definitions o f sustainability are
used within one city government policies tend to be more disaggregated compared to the
relative effectiveness o f different offices sharing one overarching definition:
While there is not a specific definition fo r sustainability that informs all city tasks,
there are a number o f policies where sustainability is a goal or an outcome
Comment from city official on questionnaire
Definition in process
Some cities indicated they are still in the process o f developing a definition for
sustainability. Several o f the comments from the questionnaires indicated that the city
was in the process o f developing Sis; as part o f that process, some are working toward
developing a definition for sustainability.
Establishing a policy on sustainability, including a definition o f what it means to
the City, is currently being explored, and the City intends to expand on
sustainability in its next comprehensive plan update.
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Integrated definition
Three o f the informants providing written comments on the questionnaire relating
to sustainability definitions referenced the Brundtland Commission definition or a
paraphrase o f it that included objectives for the three domains o f economy, environment,
and social/cultural. Cities in this category generally indicated their definition applies
across domains. The three informants used the Brundtland Commission definition below:
The city defines “sustainability” as meeting the needs o f the present without
compromising future generations ’ abilities to meet their own needs.
Integrated-plus definition
This category, which encompasses those cities with the most robust definition,
was reflected in four o f the written comments received from respondents. Typically, the
Brundtland Commission’s definition is used alongside additional city attributes and, in
three cases, reflected integrative properties across the three sustainability domains -
environmental, economic, and social. All o f the cities using this category o f definition
were ranked as SI tier 4 or 5. The comments below from questionnaire responses
received from these high-ranking cities include additional meaning, such as the American
Planning Association definition.
[The city] is a place where the well-being o f current and future citizens is
supported by a vibrant economy and a self-renewing, healthy environment - a
true reflection o f sustainability’.
As stated above, the cities that ranked 4 or 5 on the SI five-tier ranking for
developing Sis also had more specific definitions for sustainability, suggesting that cities
that have operationalized their sustainability indicators have defined sustainability.
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However, some cities that reported having Sis have not yet arrived at a specific
definition.
5.3.7 Perceived barriers to developing and implementing Sis
The significant amount o f reported time spent on sustainability, along with the
topic “Lack o f approach to sustainable development” ranking among the top five issues
shown in Table 5.7, begs the questions: W hy are only six o f the 38 surveyed cities
working with sustainability indicators? W hat barriers to developing effective SIPs are
communities encountering? Six questionnaire responses regarding perceived barriers to
SI implementation are outlined in Table 5.8.
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Table 5.8 Cross Tabs for Cities With and Without Sis. Three main topics—
Sustainability Activity, Perceived Barriers to SDPs, and Attributes of SIPs— are used to
organize the main responses to the survey questionnaire from 38 city informants. The
shaded cells in the far right column represent topics were not offered to the informants that
do not have Sis. In the middle column, the descriptors “largest,” “large,” “some,” and
“very small” correspond to terms used on the questionnaire. Where there are two
descriptors, the percentage is based on their com Dination.
Survey Topics 6 Cities WITH Sis 32 Cities
Survey Responses WITHOUT
Sis
Responses
Sustainability Activity
Respondent's job dealing with community 100% 67.9%
sustainability (some part plus large part)
Perceived Barriers to SIPs
1) Has definition for sustainability 57.1 % 20.0%
2) Perceived barriers to using Sis in decision 100 %
making?
3) Perceived barriers to selecting Sis:
Fiscal 71.4% (large)
Political & Legal 42.9% (large &some)
Policy 42.9% (large)
Organizational 42.9% (some)
4) Barriers to imDlementing Sis:
Fiscal 57.1% (largest)
Political & Legal 42.9% (some)
Organizational 42.9% (some)
Policy 42.9% (very small)
5) Funding as a barrier to implementing Sis 67%
Attributes of SIPs
Fiscal
Three questions were asked o f the respondents with Sis about barriers to
establishing a successful sustainability indicator project. The first asked if there were
barriers to using Sis in decision making, to which 100% o f the respondents answered
“yes” (see Table 5.8). The other two questions asked if there were barriers pertaining to
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selecting and implementing Sis. As shown in Table 5.8, these two questions included
four possible barriers to choose from: (1) fiscal, (2) political, (3) organizational, and
(4) policy-related. Fiscal barriers were cited most frequently as obstacles to selecting and
to implementing Sis. These responses align with written comments received from
another question on the survey that asked whether the respondent’s city measured Sis:
The city tries to incorporate sustainability into its projects when possible or
affordable but does not have a system set up to measure sustainability. Severe
financial and s ta ff constraints contribute to this situation.
Another question specifically asked cities with Sis about their program s’ funding
sources. The respondents were asked to rank eight sources o f funding for SIPs, ranging
from local taxes, state, local city enterprise funds, federal, nonprofit organizations, in
kind services, and corporate. The highest ranking sources were from state (50%), and
federal (66.7%) governments. Federal grant funds for local energy conservation programs
have been used to fund staff positions to coordinate sustainability programs. However,
other funding sources included local taxes (33.3%), nongovernmental organization
support at (40%) and corporate support at 40%.
Political and legal
Political and legal factors were stated as being the second highest barrier among
the six cities with Sis, with 42.9 % for both selecting and implementing Sis (see Table
5.8). Statements disclosing related barriers having to do with regulatory obstacles arose in
response to a question that asked if city government had developed Sis.
State land use law does not perm it a municipality to limit or stop growth based on
sustainability issues.
In the development o f a county sustainability plan, the city opted to take state
delegation o f it and then fo ld it into regional objectives to meet state legislative
directives.
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Based on the survey question about funding and the two questions about types o f
barriers discussed above, cities with and without Sis reported that they faced fiscal
barriers to developing and implementing Sis. It is clear, however, from the percentage o f
responses to the funding-specific question and comments, respondents feel fiscal,
political, and legal barriers are impeding their cities’ SIPs.
5.3.8 Attributes of operationalized SIPs
Several common characteristics were reported among the cities that have
developed SIPs. Three areas that were reported are a holistic approach toward decision
making, integration o f social programs, and a climate change or greenhouse gas (GHG)
reduction program. The questionnaire received responses and written comments for each
of these areas, as outlined below.
Holistic approach
Respondents with SIPS were asked if their economic, social, and environmental
Sis were being applied in a “holistic and interdependent fashion,” with holistic defined in
this study as incorporating economic, social, environmental, technology, and policy
aspects into decision making. O f the six cities that have SIPS, over 85.7% o f the
respondents reported that their programs applied Sis holistically. The survey also asked
respondents to express in percentages how a holistic approach was being applied. Results
are shown in Table 5.9. Planning received the highest percentage (87.5 %). This seems
logical since long-term planning issues reside in comprehensive plans, and sustainability
has temporal aspects. Respondents also reported SI were being used in a holistic fashion
in several departments, from planning to capital improvement programs. The next highest
percentage o f use for holistic approaches was for daily decision making and the
budgeting process, both at 75%.
The last question asked if the city organizational structure included a main office
from which holistic approaches for sustainability indicators were applied. 25% reported
having a single or main office from which a holistic approach was being applied to
sustainability. From the six quotes received about using one main office for addressing
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sustainability, 50% (3) o f the quotes suggested that each city department was responsible
for addressing sustainability, and 50% (3) named specific departments or a m ain office.
All o f our offices attempt to integrate sustainability practices in their work. But
the planning and sustainability agency is the main office at the city that addresses
sustainability.
Table 5.9 Holistic Approach with Sustainability Indicators. The survey asked two
questions of the six cities with Sis concerning if/how their Sis are used holistically.
Planning received the highest percentage among six possible answers. 75% percent o f the
respondents reported not having one main office to oversee their SIPs.
Question Topic Response Rate
(Respondents from six cities with SIPs)
How is holistic approach Planning 87.5%
applied? Daily decision 75.0 %
Budget Process 75.0%
CIP Process 62.5 %
Legislation 62.5 %
One main office for Sis? No 75%
Yes 25%
Findings suggest that holistic thinking exists in a high percentage of the cities that have
SIPs.
Integration o f social Sis with other programs
A question specifically about integration o f Sis with other program was asked
based on the chapter four findings that a preponderance o f cities (134 o f 200) had
developed documents, programs, and organizational structures pertaining to
environmental and economic activity but rarely mentioned social programs. In this
chapter’s study o f 38 cities, representatives from approximately 60% o f the cities with
SIPs and 60% o f those without SIPs reported integrating social or well-being indicators
into economic and environmental decision making. Sixteen o f the respondents provided a
variety of additional written comments (see Table 5.10). Several programs listed in
Table 5.10, such as those working for housing, elder care, and environmental justice,
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were mentioned as priorities, but only a few respondents provided information on what
mechanisms these programs are using to interface with SIPs.
Table 5.10 Social and Well-being SI Integration Codes and Responses. The table lists the
codes (number) next to the phrased or paraphrase response from 38 cities— with and without
Sis—that responded to the survey question about social and well-being integration. The highest
response rate was 28.94%, indicating “general non-specific integration” of social and well-being
integration of Sis with economic and environmental issues._________________ ________________
Code Listed below are literal or paraphrased quotes from the written Percentage and
comment response portion of the questionnaire pertaining to number of
integration of social or well-being indicators with economic and responses from
environmental issues. 38 cities
1 general non-specific integration 28.94% (11)
2 collaboration with social NGOs 2.63% (1)
3 low income and energy efficiency 2.63% (1)
4 elderly and home repair 2.63% (1)
5 transportation and seniors 5.26% (2)
6 water and local food production 2.63% (1)
7 health impact assessments 2.63% (1)
8 looking at overlay zoning with sustainability 2.63% (1)
9 environmental justice 2.63% (1)
10 several specific human health development indicators 5.26% (2)
An overlay zoning district along the banks o f the river that would take into
consideration the environmental, social and economic needs o f the citizens—this
zoning concept has not progressed beyond the decision stages.
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These responses indicate that a significant percentage o f cities with SIPs perceive
public engagement to play a role in SI development. This finding is consistent with the
assertion in the literature that a key component o f sustainability is normative and that,
therefore, public values are as necessary as empirical data to developing an effective SIP.
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A question pertaining to how often Sis are updated produced a variety o f answers,
with most communities that use indicators updating them annually or more frequently.
This suggests that Sis require a continuing local commitment (time and otherwise), and
that other sources o f information, such as state and national data, are needed.
5.4 Cluster Analysis
A cluster analysis was performed to identify the ways in which the cities could be
grouped according to their response data. These city clusters were compared to the
study’s five-tier sustainability indicator categories (see chapter four) to determine if the
two data sets bore any relationship to one another.
Responses to the electronic survey provided information regarding local
engagement with Sis, including who is or is not using Sis and who has plans to in the
future. Survey results were then further analyzed to determine if questionnaire responses
could support the grouping o f cities according to their similarities or differences using a
cluster analysis. Survey date from the 38-city respondents were coded and entered into
the SPSS classification and hierarchical clustering analysis program.
Two statistical analyses were run in the SPSS. The first analysis clustered the 38
city responses and displayed the nested clusters using a dendrogram. Eight different
nested clusters (A - H) can be grouped, as shown in Figure 5.1, facilitating the
formulation o f the following narrative analysis made after reviewing each city’s response
within each cluster.
5.4.1 Clusters, city size, and SI tiers
Most o f the cities in Nest A left several questions unanswered; however, some
commonalities appeared. All the cities in Nest A were medium and small-sized cities. As
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shown earlier in this chapter, city size correlates with Sl-tier, with larger cities generally
occupying higher sustainability tiers.
As mentioned earlier, the questionnaire was designed to automatically refer a
respondent to additional questions at the end o f the questionnaire depending on initial
responses, thus avoiding the interpolation o f a series o f irrelevant (unanswered) questions
following each negative response. We can see how this rationale held up in the example
o f the respondent from the City o f Bradenton, CA, which does use Sis. The respondent
was given the opportunity to answer many more questions, but answered only a few o f
those, so the city ended up in a nest with other SI users that had only answered some o f
the questions.
The cities appearing at the other end o f the dendrogram, in Nests F, G, and H,
appeared to share more relationships, perhaps because those cities completed most o f the
survey with similar responses to questions about types o f indicators used. Their residing
in similar clusters may thus be an artifact o f the questionnaire structure. As may be
expected, five o f these eight (63.5%) are using Sis and are thus ranked in the highest SI
tiers.
5.4.2 Comparison of SI five-tiers and clusters
The highlighted nested clusters (A - H) on the right column across from the listed
nested cities in Figure 5.1 are listed with the SI five-tier ranking. The overlay o f tiered
cities on nested clusters was designed to determine if there was any statistical or other
relationship between the city’s five-tier ranking and the clusters. No evidence was found
o f a meaningful relationship between the SI five-tier ranking and the nested cluster o f
cities. Nest H appears to contain the most cities with similarly tier ranking, with four out
o f five o f the cities in H ranked in Tier 1. The reason for the lack of strong relationship
between SI ranking and nested clusters could be that the rankings were focused on SI
development in each o f the cities and the nested clusters were based on the responses to
all o f the questions answered by all o f the cities, including responses to questions about
general sustainability issues. Visually comparing the other eight nested clusters to the
questionnaire responses, there did not appear to be other obvious reasons for the nested
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clusters other than city size at the top and bottom o f the dendrogram clusters and
percentage o f tier rankings. These findings are supported by earlier findings regarding the
significant correlation between city size and SI tier ranking.
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Figure 5.1 Dendrogram for 38 Cities Using Average Linkage with SI Five Tiers. The 38 cities are
listed above showing their ranking using the five tiers for SI development. Next to the SPSS dendrogram,
the nested clusters A-J have been labeled. There does not appear to be a relationship between the five-tier
ranking and these nested clusters.
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telephone in December o f 2010. Each o f the informants had completed the questionnaire
survey reported in the previous chapter or was familiar with the questions. Informants
were selected based on the same criteria used for questionnaire respondents in that each
was a city employee working as a professional planner or in the city’s sustainability
program.
The purpose o f the phone interviews was to clarify responses to the questionnaire
and to gain additional information about how Sis were used. All were initially asked to
provide examples o f ways sustainability indicators were being used in their local
government. Follow-up questions were then asked, based on their responses to the
questionnaire. Notes from the telephone interviews were written down and summarized;
the interviews were not audio recorded. The interviews were short (five to 10 minutes in
duration), and loosely structured to allow informants an opportunity to elaborate on the
answers provided on the questionnaire. The written notes from the phone interviews
were analyzed with the responses to the questionnaire to help understand their responses
to the questionnaire. Content analysis was perform ed using the same coding that was
used for the questionnaire responses submitted by the officials from all 38 cities.
6.3 Characteristics of High-Ranked Sustainability Cities
In interviews with informants from three high-ranked sustainability cities—
Albuquerque, Portland, and Fayetteville— eight major characteristics, listed below in
Table 6.1, and several common threads came to light. These characteristics are
summarized below with excerpts from the interviews and further supported with
information collected in other parts o f the study, such as that gathered from the city’s
website or from the results o f the 38-city questionnaire.
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Strong Leadership
Innovative Holistic Integrators
Electronic Monitoring & Reporting
Interagency Teams
Dashboard Lite
activities and strategies and has helped to sustain a high level o f awareness o f the
issue.
Additionally, the informant reported that almost all city expenditures are tracked;
the key question city administrators ask themselves, he said, is “Is this product
sustainable?” Products the city buys, such as paper, ink, and office furniture are all
measured and monitored for their sustainability impacts. Another city m easure concerns
energy consumption. Every city facility now uses an internal website to track
consumption, and each facility is responsible for its consumption reduction goals. Using
sustainability indicators to measure and monitor these activities has changed employee
behavior both at work and at home.
Another example o f how the city is operationalizing its sustainability indicators
can be found in its development permit (building permit) approval process. Based on this
study’s results o f surveying 200 cities using the Internet and the questionnaires o f 38
cities, Albuquerque has one o f Am erica’s leading green building programs, called the
“Green Path,” which includes building code updates that require higher energy
performance along with a strong incentive program to encourage green building
(Whitelaw, 2010). The Green Path exemplifies the city’s interdisciplinary approach,
whereby the city provides incentives focused on reducing development costs for green
building in order to move the community closer to reaching its sustainability indicators.
Some o f these innovative features include financial incentives, reduced impact fees,
public recognition in city communications and advertising, and an expedited permitting
process for green projects (City o f Albuquerque, 2011). Developers interested in green
building can apply for an integrated plan review process that requires the building to meet
additional green building standards such as the United States Green Building Council’s
LEED certification. It is reported that permitting time is cut in half when the integrated
plan review process is used. Currently, the city is moving toward a paperless permit
review, as reported by the Senior Planner for Albuquerque— another outgrowth of
sustainability goals and measures. Staff uses the Green Path system to track the number
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and size o f green building projects, with one million sq. ft. o f green buildings permitted
in 2008, representing 15% o f all new construction (W hitelaw, 2010).
In November 2009, a change in city administration occurred. Because o f the
national economic downturn, at present, the program ’s priority is being re-evaluated.
The administration appears to be retaining most o f the “AlbuquerqueGreen” program,
however, as signaled by the continued presence o f sustainability on the city’s website
banner. Notably, though, the website no longer posts the innovative graphic description
connecting the sustainability goals and measures. The basic sustainability framework and
protocols o f measurement and monitoring continue, though. According to the former
Sustainability Director for the city, expansion o f the sustainability program is at a
standstill for the time being due to the city’s financial pinch. The Office o f Sustainability
does still exist and the website that remains includes an outline o f the different
sustainability efforts, including Sustainable Water, Green Buildings, Energy and
Emissions, Forestry and Agriculture, Transportation, Land Use, Recycling and Waste
Reduction, and Leadership, Education, and Outreach.
We try to take a holistic integrated approach in measuring sustainability fro m an
economic, environmental, and social perspective.
Planner, phone interview
It is not new to say that integrated, interdisciplinary solutions provide the best
means o f tackling difficult and complex problems like those presented by local
sustainability issues. It is still rather new, however, to create processes and tools
consciously and methodically to enable such integration to occur (Newman et al., 2009).
When developed with the intention o f each indicator having an integrative function, and
when accompanied by a tracking mechanism such as a dashboard that presents the
indicators in a holistic fashion, sustainability indicators take on a holistic function,
ensuring ongoing opportunities for their meaningful integration into planning processes.
Dashboard Lite
The sustainability indicators that guide Portland’s Bureau of Planning and
Sustainability, as well as those affecting others o f that city’s bureaus, have been tracked
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for the past five years. Although a consolidated list across the major bureaus has not been
developed, numerous examples o f how the indicators have affected city policy can be
found. Portland’s disaggregated list (not one overarching list) o f sustainability indicators
could be referred to as a “dashboard lite” approach, in that they measure sustainability
goals and issues but do not report holistically. During 2009, a new effort was initiated to
involve the community as well as the city government in establishing goals and
indicators. Nonprofit organizations, residents, and representatives from the city and
county formed a partnership, the Sustainable City Government Partnership, to develop a
consolidated sustainability plan for the entire community o f Portland. In conjunction with
the first year o f the Sustainable City Government Partnership, the City will adopt formal
city-wide sustainability goals and indicators.
The process o f developing the dashboard o f sustainability>indicators is proving to
be a very political process. Which do you choose? Do you do a short list or a
comprehensive list?, etc. It is very difficult to get to a dashboard; ultimately it is
up to the decision makers to determine the measure to be used.
The current indicators are more fo r reflecting what has happened and less as a
decision making tool. There is a general interest in visiting these measures as
tools. However, no one consolidated dashboard exists.
Portland City Planner
Social sustainability metrics
In Fayetteville, as in many other communities, goals and metrics for social
sustainability are proving somewhat difficult to associate with economic and
environmental Sis. However, there is evidence that the city’s planners and social
scientists are somewhat on the same page. One goal, according to one interviewed city
planner, is to create “good neighborhoods wherein you can age in place.” This broad
objective o f connecting the built environment with social well-being speaks well o f the
direction in which Fayetteville is heading. As discussed earlier in this study, however, for
most cities, as supported by responses reported in the previous chapter’s 38-cities
questionnaire, integrating social sustainability with economic and environmental
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According to its website, the city identified six “Areas o f Emphasis” to frame and
guide its sustainability efforts in 2009 and into the future:
Table 6.2 City of Fayetteville’s Sustainability “Areas of Emphasis.” The
six “Areas of Emphasis” listed are the topics used by Fayetteville in 2009 to
frame and guide the city’s sustainability efforts (City of Fayetteville, 2009).
Community Participation & Advocacy
Ecosystem services
Land Use and Planning
Public Health
Resource Efficiency and Conservation
Sustainable Economy
For the past several years, the Strategic Planning and Sustainability Group o f Fayetteville
has reviewed city performance using these six “Areas o f Emphasis.” Sustainability
indicators associated with each o f the areas are used to measure and track progress and
accomplishments from the previous year. New indicators may be added or special topics
with indicators dropped based on the prior year’s performance. The group meets at least
monthly with representatives from other city departments to discuss and review the
departments’ progress using the areas o f interest and sustainability indicators. The group
also uses the monthly meetings as an opportunity for training.
6.3.4 Government commitment
A planner at the City o f Portland reported that the state’s efforts had had a trickle-
down effect on Oregon’s regions and the cities. The government’s statewide indicator
project, “Oregon Shines,” has produced hundreds o f indicators as part o f a benchmark
performance report for the Oregon Legislature, which, beginning in 1989, created the
Oregon Progress Board and tasked it with the creation o f a strategic plan that would set
goals in three main areas:
1) quality jobs for all Oregonians;
2) safe, caring, and engaged communities; and
3) healthy, sustainable communities. (Oregon Progress Board, 1999)
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On its website, the BPS lays out objectives and a set o f principles for planning and for
sustainability programs, all in service to the goal o f “creating a prosperous, equitable, and
healthy city.” In this spirit, the Bureau o f Planning and Sustainability builds partnerships,
engages, inspires, and educates residents and businesses, and advances policies,
programs, plans, regulations, and urban design initiatives that foster both innovation and
practical solutions (City o f Portland A uditor’s website, 2011). The Bureau has
established Sustainable City Principles with targets, summarized in Table 6.3, that all
staff members have been directed to pursue.
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Table 6.3 Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. The sustainability city principles
in the left column are listed with targets that include goals as numeric or narrative actions. The
targets are examples of city sustainability indicators. (City of Portland SEA Report, 2010).______
Sustainability Targets (sustainability indicators)
City Principles
Global Reduce City government GHG emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by 2010.
Warming
Energy Invest in all energy-efficiency measures with paybacks of 10 years or less.
When available, procure products that meet or exceed Energy Star criteria for
energy efficiency.
Paper Use Reduce paper consumption by 15% below FY 03-04 levels by 2008.
All paper products purchased by the City meet EPA procurement and
recovered materials guidelines, such as 30% post consumer recycled content.
10% of all paper products purchased by the City exceed EPA procurement
and recovered materials guidelines, such as 100% post consumer recycled
content.
Procurement Comply with purchasing guidelines developed by the Sustainable
Procurement Strategy.
Toxics By using the Precautionary Principle as a framework, replace toxic substance,
Reduction materials and products of concern with viable least-toxic alternatives by 2020.
Green Building All newly constructed City facilities are LEED for New Construction (NC)
Gold, and all existing buildings are LEED for Existing Buildings (EB) Silver.
All tenant improvements to City facilities are LEED for Commercial Interiors
(Cl) Silver and/or G/Rated Tenant Improvement Guide certified.
All new roofs are an ecoroof for a total of 70% coverage, with the remaining
roofing Energy Star rated. All replacement roofs are ecoroof and energy star
reflective.
Waste Achieve a recycling rate of 85% by 2015.
Prevention Waste prevention goal: no increase in the volume of the waste stream,
And Recycling including recycling.
Peak Oil Strive to reduce oil and natural gas consumption (community-wide goal =
50% by 2030).
Expand non-fossil fuel transportation options and use of alternative fuels.
Table 6.4. Examples of Portland’s Outcomes-Based Measures. The Workload Efficiency and
Effectiveness Measures, from the City of Portland’s Service Efforts and Accomplishment (SEA)
Report (2010), provide examples of outcomes-based sustainability measures._________________
Workload Measures
Garbage produced (estimated thousands of tons)
Waste recycled (estimated thousands of tons)
New Housing units in city and in total Urban Growth Boundary (UGB)
Percent of UGB total in city spending per capita
Efficiency Measures
Monthly residential garbage and recycling bill for 32-gallon can (adjusted)
Per capita residential energy use (millions British Thermal Units, BTU)
Global warming emissions of CO2 equivalent (Goal: 10% < 1990 level by 2010)
Change in emissions per capita since 1990___________________________________________
Effectiveness Measures
Certified green buildings in Portland
City government electricity use supplied by renewable resource (goal 100%)
Electricity customers who buy renewable energy
Recycling rate (percentage of all waste): residential, business__________________________
6.3.5 Outcomes-based approach
The BPS website lists several sustainability indicators that have been reported for
several years and that have played a role in public policy. Good examples o f the B P S ’s
effects can be seen in the city’s transportation policy and energy conservation policies, as
reported by a Portland planner during a phone interview.
On transportation: A prim ary indicator seeks to reduce vehicle miles traveled p e r
person. It has affected transportation policy, specifically causing increased
investment in public transportation and more walkable neighborhoods . . . Street
car infrastructures, specific corridors as barriers, increasing connectivity, and
parking policy have all been affected by sustainability measures.
On energy conservation: [W] e do look at metrics fo r energy conservation - how
many megawatts o f solar installed, education; [we develop] incentive program s
and then monitor the goals on a quarterly basis. By creating the metrics fo r
energy conservation and monitoring them quarterly, we determine i f the policies
and incentive programs are working. Sustainability’ indicators provide a way to
see the direct impact o f the programs while more general indicators were
tracking long-term impact.
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6.3.6 Transparency
Researcher Cynthia Williams notes that the concept o f transparency is mercurial
(2005). Williams also sees transparency in organizations as synonymous with openness
and relates transparency with organizational outcome. One o f the impressive aspects o f
Fayetteville’s sustainability program is how it has used sustainability indicators for
reporting. The annual Sustainability Goals and M etrics Report is published together with
the status o f the city’s sustainability efforts, indicating the city agency responsible for
implementing specific goals (areas o f emphasis) and including the rationale for (intent of)
the goal, metrics (sustainability measures used), and results. The linkage and alignment
between goals, intent, metrics, and results is presented to upper city m anagem ent and the
city council and is provided online to the public annually. In some cases, the activities are
reported monthly and discussed among the strategic planning and sustainability team.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect o f Fayetteville’s reporting system is that results for
each metric include positive outcomes, implications o f no action, experienced and
expected obstacles, and periodically revisiting the question o f whether the goal should be
continued or abandoned. The publishing o f results, including disclosure o f no action
alternatives and obstacles, demonstrates a transparent approach to governance.
All o f this transparency and reporting signals the presence of mechanisms for
feedback and learning that are so important during this early stage o f sustainability
program development. The fact that new programs are perpetually being considered and
old indicators questioned demonstrates willingness by city management to adapt— an
attribute essential to any city’s ability to move forward toward its sustainability goals. A
city must be able to report not only successes but also the things that do not work, and be
willing to make appropriate changes.
Fayetteville associates several types o f sustainability metrics (indicators) with
each o f its six areas o f emphasis. The two examples provided below, taken from the
city’s 2009 Sustainability Goals and Metrics Report, clearly show transparency and
alignment between a goal and results, using the metric or sustainability indicator (City o f
Fayetteville, 2009).
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Table 6.5 Fayetteville’s 2009 Sustainability Goals and Metrics Report Excerpts. Two
examples; 1) Land Use and Planning and 2) Resource efficiency and Conservation from the City
of Fayetteville’s 2009 Sustainability Goals and Metrics Report are listed below. These illustrate
how the metric (sustainability indicator) is used in program management and planning. (City of
Fayetteville, 2009)
First example
Land Use and Planning
Division Sustainability
Recommendation Update the Master Trails Map, the Transportation element o f City Plan 2025
and the Unified Development Code in order to update the FATT Plan
Intent Provide alternative transportation and p e ste r recreation options in
Fayetteville ,
Goal To develop a comprehensive trail policy that addresses trail easement
acquisitions for multi-family, residential, and commercial developments,
updates and adopts an amended Master Trail Map, amends the Master Street
Plan section of City Plan 2025 to recognize the trail system as a
transportation component, and codifies trail development standards in the
Unified Development Code
Metric 1} An amended Master Trail Plan Map.
(Indicator) 2) An amendment to City Plan 2025 to add the Trail Master Plan as a
transportation component in the Master Street Plan.
Second example
Resource efficiency and Conservation
:Sustainability
Intent Reduce Municipal government carbon footprint
Goal Reduce city’s carbon footprint 20 percent %etow 2006 baseline by 2012
Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide
(Indicator)
Result The City completed its first LEED-Silver facility (District Court) under the Green
Building Policy requiring all new, City-owned buildings under 5,000 square feet
to meet the UEED-Siiver standard. Approximately $300,(XX) o f energy efficiency
upgrades were performed on sevenCity buildings in 1st quarter o f 2009. ,
BmldingServicesinstalledthe City’s firstelastomericwhiterooffollowingthe
WalMart roof specification. And the City installed its first LED trail lights as a
pilot project. A carbon footprint assessment will be done in2010.
6.3.7 Innovative government organization
Before Portland’s specific sustainability indicators are discussed, it may be
instructive to step back and look at the city’s organizational and political structure, as
Portland’s unique form of governance likely has had an effect on how its Sis have been
developed and utilized. Portland’s government is the latest among large cities in the U.S.
to be built on a Commission model (City o f Portland A uditor’s website, 2011). The
mayor, four commissioners, and the auditor make up the six elected officials who sit on
the city council (Portland Auditor, 2011). These officials enjoy administrative and quasi
judicial powers.
[T]he Mayor and Commissioners also serve as administrators o f city
departments, individually overseeing bureaus and carrying out policies approved
by the Council. The assignment o f departments a nd bureaus is determ ined by the
Mayor and may be changed at his or her discretion. Bureau assignments do not
necessarily correspond to departmental titles. (For example, the Commissioner o f
Public Works may not necessarily have any o f the public works bureaus in his or
her portfolio.)
City o f Portland Auditor’s website
Every organizational structure has its strengths and weaknesses; a strength o f
Portland’s structure is that the four commissioners are directly accountable to the general
public. However, a commissioner or commissioners may have a different sense o f what
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the public wants compared with what the mayor may want; unlike under a “strong
mayor” structure, in Portland, a m ayor’s agenda may easily be impeded by dissention on
the commission. It thus can be challenging to develop a common vision, specifically for
sustainability and in developing a short list o f sustainability indicators - a dashboard o f
indicators for the entire city government.
During the past few years, as reported in m y interview with the city’s senior
planner, the city’s Bureau o f Planning and Sustainability has developed a template for all
o f the bureaus in the city to use in implementing sustainability principles. The senior
planner also reported that this template had proved too basic and, as a result, was in the
process o f being revised. Once refined, the template concept may ultimately prove an
effective tool for Portland’s unique political and organizational structure.
6.3.8 Regular reporting
In Fayetteville, the Sustainability Goals and Metrics Report is developed in
November and December o f each year and then published the following January.
According to a planner for the City o f Fayetteville,
There is a certain amount o f buy in from s ta ff when they meet their goals and the
report is reviewed by the City Council and Mayor. A t the end o f the year, we look
at goals and the metrics tracking the goals a nd pu t together the annual report -
some drop [programs and measures], some [programs] stay on. Special projects
drop o ff and we seem to keep a core group o f metrics year after year.
The planner also reported that the city’s sustainability efforts over the previous five years
had been oriented toward the internal policies and processes o f the city, but “ [t]his year,
we got a good handle on city goals and metrics.”
Fayetteville’s sustainability efforts continue to become more sophisticated. The
city appears to be expanding its scope, looking outside o f city government to the
community as a whole and at interconnections between programs and metrics. “The low
hanging fruit has been picked,” said the planner. “Now, the city is starting to look at the
linkages between programs and activities, taking a more holistic approach with the
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sustainability program, such as miles o f trail built, sidewalks paved, and how mass transit
and walkability are connected.”
The “low hanging fruit” for sustainability reflected by the metrics currently in use
in Fayetteville include energy efficiency, new building practices, retrofitting o f existing
buildings, biofuel use, and paper consumption in city operations. The city is now turning
to linking individual sustainability programs through actions such as developing efficient
routes for city vehicles by using spatial analysis and GPS technology.
As reported by Fayetteville’s planner, another example o f how the city is
increasingly looking beyond individual sustainability goals and indicators to their
linkages can be found in the city’s partnering with the University and advocacy groups to
study plant diversity in order to determine which species and areas should have priority
for preservation and in its attempt to connect the land-use dots, as in its ongoing effort to
physically interconnect ball parks, wetlands, and viewpoints from uplands in order to
design extended areas for non-motorized uses. The program intends not only to
accommodate alternative modes o f travel around the city but, as seems to be true for the
city’s sustainability efforts overall, to try to change the way development occurs in order
to ensure the city’s sustainability.
For the past 20 years, Portland’s Office o f the Auditor has published the “City o f
Portland, Service Efforts and Accomplishments (SEA) Report.” This document m ay be
the most comprehensive periodic performance report for city operations in the country.
The SEA report is intended to provide a transparent accounting of each o f the bureau’s
performance in terms o f inputs (resources used), outputs (activity measures), and projects
accomplished. The report includes narrative statements on program efficiencies and
effectiveness. The SEA report is open to the public and decision makers and uses data
made available by the participating bureaus. In addition to summarizing and highlighting
outcomes in key service areas, the report compares results against those in previous
reports (City o f Portland SEA Report, 2010).
The report is unlike other city audits in several respects, including in its omission
o f recommendations for improving city financial processes. Rather, the report sees its
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purpose as promoting the use o f performance data to inform management decisions and
to demonstrate some outcomes o f bureau efforts (City o f Portland SEA Report, 2010).
The report is also intended to instigate prompt examination o f any positive or negative
trends that may be o f interest to city officials and residents (City of Portland SEA Report,
2010). Lacking the benefit o f overarching city sustainability goals, the disaggregated
indicators contained in the SEA report are nevertheless very useful for measuring and
monitoring sustainability progress.
6.3.9 Features common to successful SIP cities
Looking at three of the m ost successful sustainability cities discussed above,
based on content analysis, common factors contributing to Sis actually being utilized by
the city governments come to light:
Official leadership and professional support - Support and leadership from both
top policy makers (elected officials) and committed and knowledgeable staff is necessary
for developing and institutionalizing Sis.
Human capital - Most cities with advanced sustainability plans and SIPs happen
to be cities where universities are located. An educated and engaged populace contributes
to human capital.
Funding - Federal funding (economic stimulus funding) has enabled m any cities
to hire staff, sometimes in the form o f sustainability coordinators. Considering the recent
downturn in the national economy, only the very committed cities are managing to keep
their sustainability indicator programs going at full steam.
Dashboards and relevant reporting - Sustainability indicators must not only be
relevant but presented to decision makers and the public in an easily accessible and
useable manner. Successful sustainability cities surveyed in this study have been or are
moving toward dashboard reporting formats.
Diverse and emerging conceptual models - There is no one commonly agreed-to
model for local sustainability programs and indicators. Several different models are being
used and commonalities have begun to emerge. As more cities establish programs,
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organizational structures and decision making processes and planning will become
available and will contribute to the development o f an increasing number o f SI programs.
6.4 Sum m ary
The three case studies discussed above show how high-ranked cities are using a
variety o f innovative techniques in lieu o f conceptual models or standard operating
procedures to develop and implement sustainability indicators.
The questionnaires supplied from the previous chapter provided one layer o f
information, while the telephone interviews deepened this study’s findings regarding
cities’ priorities and decision-making processes. Examples o f institutionalizing
sustainability indicators are not usually easily found on a city’s website or made
noticeable to the public, perhaps because government processes and practices are
sometimes not tangible or effectively able to engage with the public eye. Specific factors,
such as energy-efficient buildings, green cars, or recycling programs, are more tangible
and thus more easily reported. The survey o f the 38 cities provided an effective method to
confirm and focus the information gathered in and findings made as a result o f the broad-
based web investigation conducted o f the 200 cities in the first phase o f the study. Survey
responses frequently contextualized, informed, and deepened my understanding o f local
activities. Where a city’s website had provided some information, the questionnaire
responses, particularly in the comments section, often told the story behind web-posted
facts.
Still, a nuanced understanding o f how particular cities’ successful sustainability
indicator projects had evolved over time and had come to fruition could not be garnered
from websites and digital surveys. The phone interviews thus proved critical in eliciting
stories about and details underlying ways that sustainability indicators are currently being
successfully integrated into governmental decision making.
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7.2 Methods
The study o f this chapter used a single case study design (Gerring 2007) for
investigating the development o f Sis in the community of Juneau, Alaska. A case study
approach was selected because o f the complexity o f studying community behavior and
decision making. Case study methods are widely recognized in many social science
studies, especially when in-depth explanations o f a social behavior are sought (Zainal,
2007).
As part o f the case study, a cross-case analysis was conducted to compare
questionnaire survey responses by the informants from 38 cities, the results o f which are
reported in chapter five, with responses from 21 focus group members in the Juneau case
study.
The Juneau case study was designed with the findings from the preceding phases
o f the dissertation’s research in mind. The wide breadth o f the 200 cities explored in
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chapter four and the 38 cities surveyed in chapter five set the stage for a more
particularized and in-depth case study o f a single city’s experiences and also afforded
opportunities for cross-case studies (Gerring, 2007). The first two research phases o f the
dissertation thus laid the foundation for an analysis o f Juneau’s situation by identifying
nationwide patterns and trends in sustainability planning, implementation, and reporting,
and by unpacking lessons learned by other communities that have attempted with varying
degrees o f success to overcome obstacles to SI implementation similar to those faced by
planners in Alaska’s capital city.
Multiple sources o f data were used in the Juneau case study, including primary
and secondary qualitative data. Three focus groups consisting o f a total o f 21 expert
informants provided the primary data source for gathering information on and learning
about the experiences o f experts involved with Juneau’s sustainability indicators. All o f
the expert focus group participants responded to the same questionnaire used for the 38
cities, allowing for a cross-study comparison o f the two research samples. A benefit o f
using an expert focus group, as described by Krueger (1998), is that such groups elicit a
variety of interactions among study participants, resulting in a more open discussion o f
the research topic. Secondary sources for this case study included local environmental,
economic, and social information and gray literature, including government-authored
reports about Juneau. My experience participating in and observing Juneau’s SI efforts,
as described in my personal vignette in chapter one, provided an additional source. A
series of steps adapted from those presented by Morgan (1984) were used to organize and
conduct the focus groups.
7.3 Context and background
Cities are complex adaptive systems (Grove, 2009). The local context for the
Juneau case study provided below sets out the main ecological, social, cultural, and
demographic variables that comprise Juneau’s unique complexity. Results o f a recent
(2008) public opinion poll are also provided to give a sense o f the general public’s
opinions on some o f the main issues in the community.
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Figure 7.1. Map of the City and Borough of Juneau. The map shows the boundaries for the
City and Borough of Juneau. The inset is a map of the State of Alaska with a blue star
indicating Juneau’s location. (Adapted from City and Borough of Juneau website, 2012)
The downtown area is made up o f small, historic, walkable streets, with ample
facilities and parks where residents routinely gather for numerous cultural, recreational,
and educational activities. Perhaps the physical closeness and natural biophysical
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features, and limited surface access, together with the city’s geographic isolation,
contribute to residents’ strong sense o f place, discussed later in this chapter.
Figure 7.2. Photograph of Downtown Juneau, Alaska. Photo of Juneau looking north with
Mount Juneau in the background.
Table 7.1 Juneau Demographic Snapshot 2009. Juneau has a slightly older
population and smaller African-American population than Alaska statewide.
However, Juneau residents have higher income, less poverty, and are better
educated than Alaska residents statewide.
2009 Population Estimates
Juneau Alaska
Population 30,661 692,314
Percent female 49.7% 49.0%
Median age 38.0 33.5
Age under 5 6.9% 8.4 %
Age 18+ 74.9% 71.1%
Age 65+ 8.4% 7.5%
White 71.7% 68.5%
Black or African-American 0.7% 3.7%
American Indian/Alaska Native 11.2% 13.5%
Asian 5.6% 4.7%
Pacific Islander 0.5% 0.6%
Some other race 1.8% 1.7%
Two other races 8.6% 7.4%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2009)
Notably, the median age in Juneau is 38— older than both the state and national
medians o f 33.5 and 36.7 respectively (Alaska Department o f Labor, 2010). Juneau’s
population is aging, with the number o f seniors more than doubling in the past 20 years—
from 10 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2009.
Beyond the high per capita number o f professionals found in any capital city,
many o f Juneau’s citizens are well-educated, as shown on Table 7.1. Several educational
and research institutions ranging from the University o f Alaska Southeast to federal
research centers like the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Laboratory and
NOAA and NMFS facilities, add to the city’s rich intellectual capital. Native cultural
centers like the Sealaska and Goldbelt Heritage Institutes contribute to a deep and rich
indigenous culture.
7.3.3 Health
According to a 2010 study by the University o f W isconsin Population Health
Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Juneau is the healthiest community in
Alaska. A large number o f health factors were used to determine this ranking, including
smoking, adult obesity, excessive drinking, high school graduation, unemployment, and
others (cited in JEDC, 2011, at p. 31).
7.3.4 Government and economy
As the regional hub for northern southeast Alaska, the City and Borough o f
Juneau owns and operates many facilities and services, including an airport, hospital, ski
area, and several harbors. At a little over 31,000, Juneau has the fourth largest population
o f any city in Alaska. Its economy is built on fishing, mining, tourism, education, health
care industries, and government.
Total Employment 17,932 17,528 *2.3%
Total Government Employment 7,436 7,284 * 2 . 1%
Total Private Sector Employment 10,496 10,244 *2.5%
Total P a y ro l ($000) $790,329 $754,402 * 4 .8 %
A v e ra g e W ag e $44,074 $43,039 * 2 .4 %
U nem ploym ent 5.80% 6.10% * 0.3% p ts
Juneau Dem ographics'
P opu latio n 31,275 30,946 ♦ 1. 1%
M ed ian A g e 38.1 38 ♦0.3%
Juneau Schools
K-12 S ch o o l D istrict Enrollm ent* 4,968
■
4,953 * 0 .3 %
Spring U niversity of A lask a S outheast* 3,067 2,724 * 12.6%
Enrollm ent (Ju n e a u c a m p u s )
C hild C a re C a p a c ity 4 575 583 ♦-1.4%
Juneau Sector Employment]
M lningi 510 404 * 2 6 .2 %
Fishers a n d C rew (Juneau Residents)* 689 697 ♦ -1.1%
H ealth C a re 1 1,391 1,327 * 4 .8 %
Tourism 1 (see definition) 2,162 2,156 ♦ 0.3%
L argest E m ployer: s ta te o f A laskai 4,276 4,221 ♦ 1.3%
Juneau Transportation
Total P a sse n g e r Arrivals 1,257,470 1,380,359 ♦-8. 9%
Cruise Passenger Arrivals’ 875,593 1,018,700 ♦-14.0%
Alaska Airlines Passenger Arrivals® 267.765 257,719 ♦3.9%
Ferry Passenger Arrivals7 77,991 73,189 * 6.6%
C a p ita l C ity Transit (Bus) Ridership* 1,226,286 1,212,419 ♦ 1. 1%
Figure 7.3 Juneau by the Numbers. ’Alaska Department of Labor; 2Alaska Department of
Education and Early Development; 3University of Alaska; 4Association for the Education of
Young Children - Southeast Alaska; Southeast Alaska Multiple Listing Service; 6City and
Borough of Juneau; 7Alaska Marine Highway System; 8Juneau International Airport;
9McDowell Group and Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska; 10Bureau of Transportation Statistics;
’’U.S. Census, 2010. “Tourism” includes air, scenic, and sightseeing transportation, travel
agencies, and Leisure and Hospitality. (Adapted from JEDC, 2011, p. 1)
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As Alaska’s capital city, Juneau employs 42% o f all o f the government workers in
the 49th state— 41% in state government and 15% in local government (Alaska
Department o f Labor, 2011). Over the past 30 years, the community has successfully
overcome several attempts to move the state capital or the state legislature out o f Juneau.
It is generally acknowledged that losing the capital would have severe consequences for
not only the local economy but for the C ity’s identity and culture.
The cruise ship industry has emerged as a major economic driver in the area over
the past thirty years. In 1990, 235,000 cruise ship borne tourists visited Juneau; by 2010,
that number had increased to over 1.2 million (JEDC, 2011). The literature indicates that
industrial tourism has had significant negative effects on social-ecological systems in
coastal communities, with the interface between marine and terrestrial ecosystems being
especially vulnerable to recreational impacts related to tourism (Mieczkowski, 1995). The
rapid growth o f the cruise ship industry has changed the built environment in downtown
Juneau as well as dealing ubiquitous consequences for community life overall. Although
cruise ship tourism has created jobs for residents (JEDC, 2011), environmental impacts,
such as air pollution and water pollution, have become an issue for the community and
state. Several violations of air quality regulations and wastewater discharges in excess o f
state water quality standards have been recorded (Alaska Department o f Environmental
Conservation (ADEC), 2011). A scientific panel has now been established to advise the
state on environmental issues associated with the cruise ship industry (ADEC, 2011).
Some o f these impacts have been mitigated, for example with the development, in
2001, o f the first shore power electrical hook up, which has decreased air pollutant
emissions from docked ships while increasing purchases o f resident hydroelectric power
that help provide for the city’s emergency power needs (Alaska Cruise Association,
2011). This growing industry represents one o f Juneau’s central sustainability issues.
Juneau jobs pay relatively high wages, with the average government worker
earning $52,238 and the average private sector worker earning $36,515 (JEDC, 2010).
Although these wages appear to be healthy, the cost o f living in Juneau is very high. For
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example, the price o f housing has increased, in spite o f the national housing crisis, to an
average o f $313,385 for a single-family home.
7.3.5 Biennial public opinion poll
In 2008, the City commissioned the League o f W omen Voters o f Juneau (League)
to conduct a biennial public opinion poll to coincide with the C ity’s biennial budget. At
that time, the League had been conducting the poll for over 20 years. The poll, which
employs a telephone survey with specific and open-ended questions, and which is
statistically rigorous, has historically been used by city government and the elected
officials to determine the general public’s opinions on pertinent issues ranging from
existing city services, to city financial management (City and Borough o f Juneau website,
2012). The survey included seven categories o f questions:
1 - Funding city government (increase, reduce, or maintain spending)
2 - Funding for city services
(police, parks and recreation, schools, ski area, airport, docks and harbors,
libraries, and youth)
3 - City spending 10 priorities (see Table 7.2)
4 - High school sports and activities funding
5 - Child care
6 - Affordable housing
7 - Cruise ship docks (League o f W omen Voters o f Juneau, 2008)
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Table 7.2 CBJ 2008 Budget Survey, City Spending Priorities. The City and
Borough of Juneau (CBJ) spending priorities included in the 2008 Budget Survey
are listed in the far right column. Residents were asked to respond given a scale of 1
- 5, with 1 being the least important and 5 being the most important.
City Spending Priorities All CBJ Residents
Spending Priority (1 thru 5) 1 2 3 4 5
Recycling 9.1% 7.9% 22.6% 20.6% 39.8%
Airport Improvements 18.3% 21.1% 33.8% 15.5% 11.4%
North Douglas Crossing 36.3% 15.6% 16.4% 15.1 16.6%
Expanded Bus Hours & Routes 14.9% 13.1% 30.3% 25.2% 16.5%
Water/Sewer Extensions 9.8% 15.4% 37.4% 24.4% 12.9%
Solid Waste Disposal/ Land Fill 3.8% 4.3% 21.7% 30.4% 39.6%
Enhanced Trail Access and Upkeep 23.1% 22.3% 30.7% 16.0% 7.9%
Youth Programs 4.8% 8.4% 34.7% 29.4% 22.8%
Energy Efficiency 7.2% 8.2% 22.4% 23.7% 38.4%
Social Services Programs 8.5% 10.5% 34.4% 25.9% 20.8%
Source: (League of Women Voters o f Juneau, 2008)
Most o f the respondents to the survey responded favorably to the C ity’s level o f
services and funding priorities. The public’s general satisfaction with the C ity’s budget
priorities reflected general satisfaction with the City’s policy direction. Specifically, 44%
o f the respondents reported that city government should maintain its current spending
levels, with 12% - 15% favoring reductions in staff or capital projects or increases in
sales tax or property taxes. Between 60% and 80% o f the respondents supported
maintaining or increasing funding for nine basic services. Because residents are generally
satisfied with their government and because the opinion poll provides public feedback on
issues surrounding city governance, it may be considered by some to provide sufficient
community feedback, thereby supplanting any need for other indicators for measuring or
tracking the goals established in the Comprehensive Plan, but, as became clear in this
study’s analysis o f the successful sustainability cities reported on in chapter six, building
a sustainable and resilient community requires a more complex approach than simply
periodically taking the pulse o f the public on general city management issues.
7.3.6 Focus on retention o f state capital
Although not included in the City opinion poll, since the 1980s, retaining Juneau
as the capital o f Alaska continues to be the m ost important issue of common concern for
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Table 7.4 List of Questions Used to Guide Focus Group Discussions. Six questions
were used to guide all three focus group discussions.
1 Should we be concerned about measuring sustainability?
2 How, to what extent, and at what cost?
3 How can such indicators be useful to decision makers?
4 Why have Juneau’s sustainability indicators not been effectively used?
Did the original effort not take the Sis far enough?
Where are the Sis now? Why?
What helped Juneau’s Sis get as far as they did?
What were/are constraints or barriers to implementing Sis in Juneau?
Should the SI program be changed, further developed, or dropped in the
future? How? Why?
5 What are the conditions necessary for sustainability indicators to work?
6 In a perfect world, how would you make Juneau sustainable?
What role do you see sustainability indicators playing toward that raid?
produced by axial coding. Axial coding, as explained by Kruger (1998), is the process o f
relating codes to each other. In this case, the codes in the center column were grouped
according to applicable topics and research questions and organized in one column on the
left of the table. Appendix 6 is a table containing the codes chosen to summarize
participants’ statements and comments. A list o f the 28 codes generated from the visual
analysis is displayed in Table 7.5.
Table 7.5 Codes Used for Analyzing Focus Group Data. The following codes are arranged
in the table for convenience of presentation; the columns and rows do not bear significance.
holistic complexity silo 50/50 divide Resilience
integration tangibility dashboard leadership long term
planning
continuum feedback Social change W orkload
ownership specialization expedient procedural Barriers
funding unknown incrementalism status quo Performance
knowledge political alignment
transfer support
A list of questions drawn from the dissertation’s main research questions, with
some new related questions added in, were linked to the codes and direct quotes o f focus
group members. These questions provided an organizing strategy to impose some level o f
order on the large amount o f data that had been reduced using coded quotes from the
focus group transcripts and to link theory where appropriate with the results.
7.5 History of Juneau’s Sustainability Indicator Project
In 1992, communities around the world heard the call o f the United Nations Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro to develop sustainability indicators projects (SIPs) as a way o f
both lending substance to amorphous definitions o f sustainability and clarifying
sustainability’s components. A few Juneau residents who attended the Earth Summit
returned with an interest in developing Sis for their community (see chapter one, personal
vignette). As is evident from this study’s review o f 200 cities discussed in chapter four,
Sis typical o f the early post-Earth Summit SIPs established in American cities were
driven either by a small group o f citizens or local government or a combination o f the
two. Also, as can be seen from this study’s review o f 200 cities and questionnaire
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responses from 38 o f those cities, among these first efforts can be found a common
inability ultimately to implement Sis once they had been drafted.
One o f the capital city’s first efforts that was called by the name o f
“sustainability” got underway in 1993 with the convening o f the Juneau Sustainability
Community Roundtable (“Roundtable”). As this study’s research revealed, up to around
this period o f time, most o f the community SIPs had been initiated by local, regional, or
national governments outside o f the United States.
The Roundtable came about on the initiative o f six local residents who had begun
to care a great deal about sustainability. Juneau’s SI effort was similar to that found in the
Sustainable Seattle project in that it was a bottom-up effort spearheaded by a nonprofit
organization (Holden, 2006). In Juneau’s case, it was the Roundtable under the Juneau
Chamber o f Commerce, and, in Seattle, it was a nonprofit organization called
“Sustainable Seattle” (Holden, 2006). The Roundtable was thought up during
conversations between a few interested citizens and the Executive Director o f the Juneau
Chamber o f Commerce and discussed further at neighborhood meetings held in
preparation for the periodic update o f the City and Borough o f Juneau’s Comprehensive
Plan.
Because the Roundtable applied pre-existing criteria for selecting indicators, the
SI drafting process was fairly straightforward, in particular in the environmental and
economic sustainability domains. Developing Sis for the social domain, however, proved
more difficult for Roundtable members because o f the lack o f available databases and
lack o f social domain expertise on the roundtable. W hatever its shortcomings, after
several months o f meetings, the Roundtable succeeded in developing questions and a list
o f Sis that were later adopted as Appendix C o f the City and Borough o f Juneau’s 1995
Comprehensive Plan. However, to date, the indicators have yet to be used in decision
making or in the setting o f policy (S. Montana, personal communication, June 15, 2007).
In 2006, again as part o f the revision process for the CBJ Comprehensive Plan,
the city held neighborhood meetings to revise the 1995 list o f sustainability indicators
(see Appendix 7). Around that time, in 2005, the city also convened a scientific panel on
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climate change. Then, in 2007, the CBJ Assembly established a citizen-based group, the
Juneau Commission on Sustainability. As part o f the commission’s stated mission, it
began developing a plan for revising the draft sustainability indicators that had come out
of a series o f neighborhood meetings held in 2006 and 2007 (Juneau Commission on
Sustainability, 2011). A copy o f Juneau’s draft sustainability indicators is attached as
Appendix 7.
In 2008, the CBJ Assembly approved revisions to the Comprehensive Plan,
including a chapter on sustainability that directed the Juneau Commission on
Sustainability to develop indicators. The Revised 2008 Comprehensive Plan removed the
appendix with the list o f draft indicators that had accompanied the 1995 Plan.
Since 2008, following the lead o f other communities around the country that have
been engaged in local actions to mitigation climate change and to address other looming
issues, the City and Borough of Juneau has taken several steps toward building a more
sustainable community.
summarized in narrative form. The findings served as the basis for the Discussion section
that comes later in this chapter.
7.6.1 Cluster analysis o f Juneau’s SI activity compared to 38 cities
A graphic illustration comparing Juneau’s SI experiences with the experiences o f
the 38 cities surveyed earlier in this study was prepared using a cluster analysis and
dendrogram. The SPSS cluster analysis bundled the 39 city responses into 10 nested
clusters (A - J) displayed as such on the dendrogram shown at Figure 7.4. As with the
tier groupings identified in chapter four, certain rationales can be located when reviewing
each city’s response within each cluster. For example, most o f the cities in cluster A left
several questions on the questionnaire unanswered. The cities appearing at the other end
o f the dendrogram, nests D - J, appeared to share more characteristics, perhaps because
those cities completed most o f the survey with similar responses to questions about types
o f indicators used.
Juneau appears nested at the far bottom o f the dendrogram with other cities that
responded to many o f the questions. Cities most unlike Juneau that appear nested toward
the top o f the dendrogram generally responded to fewer questions because they answered
that they did not have Sis, which disqualified them from answering several questions, or
because they did not answer questions for other unknown reasons. None o f the cities at
the top o f the dendrogram responded to any o f the questions about types o f indicators
used. This included the City o f Fayetteville, which does measure sustainability and is a
high-performing sustainability city; however, because its official did not respond to the
question regarding the type o f indicators the city uses, Fayetteville appears nested toward
the top o f the dendrogram.
Looking at the responses from cities located farthest from Juneau on the
dendrogram in four survey areas— defining sustainability, measuring sustainability, social
domains, and types o f indicators— provides insight into reasons for the nests in Table 7.7.
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Cities in the first cluster, Nest A, for the most part did not answer most o f the questions,
including questions about types o f indicators, whereas, unlike most o f the cities, Juneau
did respond to questions about types o f indicators. Perhaps Juneau respondents (average
o f the 21 focus group members) felt obligated to me since they were familiar or had a
professional relationship with me.
Table 7.7 Top and Bottom Cities on Dendrogram and Responses to Questionnaire.
Differences between the responses to four questions from the questionnaire suggest why the
10 cities at the top of the dendrogram (Fig.7.5) and 2 cities (Juneau and Newport News, CA)
at the bottom of the dendrogram are positioned farthest from each other. Juneau, at the bottom
of the dendrogram, answered yes to all of the four questions listed below compared to the top
eight cities positioned at the top of the dendrogram that answered no to all the questions._____
Fo ur Questions from the questionnaire
(resj Donses to q u estio n s N= no Y= yes)
Do you define Does the city Is the social What types
Cities sustainability? measure domain of
sustainability? Integrated with indicators
economic & are used?
environmental
issues?
Cities at th e Top of D endrogram
Waterbury CT N N N N
Hoffman E st, N N N N
CA
Buena Park, CA N N N N
Wayne, NJ N N N N
Bristol, CT N N N N
Encinitas, CA N N N N
Hampton, CA N N N N
Savannah, GA Y N N N
Cities a t th e B ottom o f D endrogram
Juneau, AK Y Y Y | Y
N ewport News, Y N Y N
CA
W hy is the city o f Newport News the farthest away or most dissim ilar (other than
Juneau) from first cluster cities? Looking more closely, we find that N ewport News
answered the question about sustainability definitions, while the other Nest A cities did
not. Also, Newport News answered the question about integrating indicators positively;
other Nest A cities did not. Juneau was similar to Newport News in that it has defined
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sustainability and has integrated social indicators. Perhaps the biggest reason Juneau was
separated from the other cities is because Juneau’s responses represent an average arrived
at by analyzing 21 separate responses compared with individual responses from one
official in each o f the other 38 cities. Using all o f the responses from the 21 focus group
members to arrive at an average response likely resulted in broader coverage o f the 40
questions compared to the other cities, where only one individual responded.
Juneau was ranked as a Tier 3 (aggregated Sis) on the five-tier SIP development
scale presented in chapter four because the city has institutionalized sustainability goals
in its comprehensive plan and has drafted Sis, which it is currently revising. O f the 200
cities surveyed in this study’s initial phase, 23 cities and Juneau fell into Tier 3.
Considering the number o f cities in Tier 4 and 5, Juneau ranks in the top 21% o f the cities
surveyed in this study in the U.S. for developing SIPs. Tier 3 (aggregated) cities like
Juneau are at the reorganization/renewal phase o f the adaptive cycle, which tracks with
where Juneau is in revising its Sis. W hen looking for a city similarly situated with
Juneau, o f the cities surveyed as part o f this study, Fayetteville, Arkansas, a Tier 4 city,
has a similar population and has high human capital with a college as part o f its
community. Juneau has not operationalized its draft Sis or used them in monitoring and
reporting; therefore, unlike Fayetteville, Juneau did not rank in one o f the highest tiers.
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Figure 7.4 Dendrogram with SI five tiers of 38 cities, including Juneau. SPSS Dendrogram
shows nested clusters A-J with SI Five Tier Ranking listed vertically next to the nested cities. No
apparent relationship exists between the city ranks and the nested clusters.
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The feedback node suggests several relationships. The value to this study o f the network
diagram o f codes is that it allows all o f the codes to be viewed together, along with their
interrelationships. By viewing them together, we can better learn how terms fit in context
with other codes.
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Figure 7.5 Network Diagram of Codes. Twenty-seven codes are shown as nodes in the network
diagram output from Altas.ti software. The nodes are connected with arrows suggesting one of
three types of relationships between the nodes: 1) is part of; 2) is associated with; or
3) contradicts. “Centralized,” for example, is part o f “green team” and contradicts
“compartmentalize.”
mention o f the word “resilience” in all three focus groups. This is consistent with study
findings that very few cities know o f or apply resilience concepts.
Juneau’s current Comprehensive Plan also includes the following new provisions
related to Sustainability Indicators:
Table 7.9 Juneau Comprehensive Plan (2008) Sustainability Indicator Provisions. The
table is from the 2008 City and Borough of Juneau’s Sustainability Policy Section 2.3. This
section directs staff to develop, implement, and monitor the effectiveness of sustainability
indicators (Adapted from City and Borough of Juneau Comprehensive Plan Update, 2008)._____
Section Description
Policy 2.3 “develop and use sustainability indicators to measure Juneau’s progress
toward becoming a more sustainable community.”
These newer provisions from the city’s 2008 revised and adopted Comprehensive
Plan provide the requisite policy direction for staff to move ahead with developing and
implementing sustainability indicators, but this has yet to be done. However, the Juneau
Commission on Sustainability did start the process o f developing new sustainability
indicators in 2010 (Juneau Commission on Sustainability website, 2011).
Only two members o f the focus group commented on having difficultly defining
sustainability or having an issue with defining sustainability— most likely because the
city’s 1995 and revised 2008 comprehensive plans already contained a definition.
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commented, while there is a trend toward more models developing, very few were
available at the time Juneau initiated its project.
The good news nationally is that the more cities do develop successful models fo r
this, the more other cities can borrow from.
In other words, the time frame within which an Assembly member wants to get
something accomplished and the time frame within which a planner thinks it should be
accomplished often differ. Some in the groups thought sustainability indicators could be
used to help focus people in on the most important sustainability issues and, in that way,
help elected officials and city officials become more synchronized around priorities and
timelines.
Not a leadership priority
The current mayor noted that “city didn’t have a broad sense o f sustainability
(B. Botelho, personal communication, October 12, 2010). It was an add-on activity, not
part o f the culture.” Another participant noted, regarding other pressures and limited time
to exercise leadership necessary to initiate new programs,
I think the Assembly leadership is really key and it comes back to that sort o f
classic frustration o f government being in reactive mode rather than leadership
mode and however much you want to be more in the pro-active mode, you have to
react so fa s t and so overwhelmingly all the time, that i t ’s very hard to g et there.
7.7.3 Potential uses of Sis
The focus group members commented on several constructive features o f
sustainability indicators. Below I highlight their major points, which included how Sis
could support more holistic governance through integrating program objectives, provide
more tangibility, and contribute to sustainable development.
Holistic approach and integration
Focus group members expressed clear concern regarding the growing complexity
o f the local community and a consequent increase in the government’s tendency to
compartmentalize its services and planning. Below are a series o f focus group member
comments about the concern o f compartmentalization and how Sis m ight be used to
address the problem.
As a community grows, by necessity it has to compartmentalize . . . you go to
small communities in Alaska . . . and they have one governing body and one
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government that controls everything. But the bigger you get, the more you
compartmentalize things.
Participants suggested that Sis could be used to look at several programs issues at once.
I f you ’re preserving one environmental value, you ’re probably destroying several
others at the same time. You really have to look at everything simultaneously and
sustainability indicators could provide this tool.
I think, with so many o f these things, we are doing the silo kind o f thing—ju s t
looking at that one indicator and whether or not i t ’s sustainable.
couldn’t have a real true consideration o f the health, well being, economic,
whatever health without that piece.
Tangibility
Focus group members voiced concerns about the need for direct and clear
outcomes in order to make sustainability efforts meaningful to the general public. One
remarked:
Building a more energy efficient building, [where] there are direct and clear
outcomes... might not be the most efficient use o f resources . . . but, once i t ’s
defined, we can go there.
Some o f the focus group members commented that Sis may help close the gap by
providing clarity “because we lack clear numbers and indicators that allow us to make
those decisions.”
Sustainable development
The struggle between maintaining a quality o f life and still allowing development
o f local natural resources was brought up as a discussion topic by members o f the focus
group. Several focus group members used the term “50/50 divide,” which, in government
parlance, refers to a perceived even division o f public opinion in the Juneau community
over development issues— for example the building o f a road connection to the Alaska
road system or reopening a gold mine adjacent to downtown.
Another focus group member called the 50/50 divide “an ideological divide that is
mushy and vague, and the middle ground sways this way and that, but it’s not from lack
o f indicators.” Some focus group members see the 50/50 divide as a positive
characteristic, arguing that there should be room for healthy discussion and that Juneau’s
political split does not have to be divisive. Most o f the participants felt implementing Sis
could improve the discussion, contentious or not, by bringing forward more and better
information to consider.
In the above highlighted discussions, three overall areas of concern arose
repeatedly in the focus groups: growing complexity in government, the need for
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future action (Argyris & Schon, 1978; Argyris, 1992, cited in Kofinas, 2009). Juneau’s
social capital and strong sense o f place have contributed greatly to the com m unity’s
ability to learn and adapt.
7.8.2 Capitalize on residents’ strong sense o f place
While not a central focus o f the research conducted in the Juneau case study, it is
difficult to talk about Juneau without mentioning the “sense o f place” that lies at the heart
o f Juneau’s resilience capacity. “Sense o f place” refers to the shared values and vision o f
a community enhanced by the development o f skills in individuals and groups to
effectively plan and act on collective strategies to create positive change (Chaskin, 2001).
Evidence o f this capacity, which is closely related to the city’s significant social capital,
can be found in robust citizen engagement in community affairs, a relatively high
educational level, engagement in social networks, and other factors, all o f which have
aided the community in rebuking repeated threats to its resilience (for example moving
the state capital from Juneau).
Many of the focus group members described the exceptional aesthetic and natural
beauty o f Juneau and emphasized that a sense o f place is important. Some researchers
have discussed specifically how a shared sense o f place within a community can shape
each o f the three sustainability domains (Dale et al., 2008). Researcher Lefebvre
described natural space as a vanishing commodity and thus viewed the construction o f
social and built space as the main shaper o f place within a community (Dale et al., 2008).
In the literature, researchers discuss how a sense o f identity grows partly from physical
place, arguing that creating communities in touch with their environment is a key
precursor to sustainable community development (Brady, 2006). The interplay between
space and place is especially complex, and, as discussed in earlier chapters o f this
dissertation, because most communities tend to silo their domains, very few cities have
been able to effectively measure and track ephemeral, overarching values like sense o f
place.
Juneau’s natural elements, including the frequent rains and long winter, together
with the city’s relatively compact built environment may explain why residents easily
149
move around in close physical proximity to one another at social and recreational events,
sharing limited sidewalk space and riding together on public transit at rates higher than
other cities. Downtown Juneau, where most o f the residents work, is pressed up against
the mountains on one side and barricaded by water on the other, making for a
geographically-imposed highly compact urban space. Juneau was ranked as one o f the
“Ten Best Small Transit Agencies” in North America in 1999 by M ETRO M agazine
(City and Borough o f Juneau Capital Transit, 2012). According to researcher Robert
Putnam (2007), contact theory suggests that diversity that has been established for a long
period o f time can erode the in-group/out group distinction and enhance out-group
solidarity, bridging social capital and lowering ethnocentrism. Juneau is home to several
ethnic groups that have been here for several generations.
Adding to the geographic isolation is the lack o f road connection to an outside
road system, which forces more closely proximate housing and work areas, which m ay be
supporting the community’s strong social network. The downtown business district and
neighborhoods close to it are organized in a relatively linear fashion to take greatest
advantage o f limited flat building space, much o f which is man-made o f m ining and other
debris deposited during the first half o f the 20th century.
For a city o f such small population, Juneau is known for its mix o f artisan and
highly professional people and strong multi-ethnic roots. Juneauites have developed
social outlets such as an award-winning live theater and diverse and frequent cultural and
performing arts events (JEDC, 2011). The city also has an engaged citizenry, with over
35 boards and commissions through many o f which residents participate directly in local
government decision making (City and Borough o f Juneau website, 2012). The strong
sense o f place inspired by Juneau’s beautiful natural surroundings is augmented by the
many private and public interior venues, where locals share activities and have
conversations with neighbors— especially during the long winter.
The cohesiveness o f the community is reflected in the civility o f political
campaigns and the congeniality with which local and state political leaders o f diverse
political parties get along. There are several examples o f how the local state
150
representatives o f different political parties network successfully. For example, the three
political leaders - a Democrat State Senator, and two State Representatives, one
Democrat and one Republican, regularly conduct joint community constituent meetings,
introduce and recognize one other in attendance at community ceremonies, and in
newsletters are portrayed as working in unison on a variety o f legislative initiatives
(Munoz, 2011).
Based on my observations, a sense o f civility, or some might say a forced sense o f
civility, persists in Juneau. I have noticed residents saying hi, greeting each other, and
engaging in impromptu conversation more than in other communities I have lived in or
observed. This civility may be traceable to the closed geographical quarters in which
Juneau’s residents coexist. People have several occasions, sometimes daily, to see each
other, which creates an obligation and sense o f responsibility toward one another. W hile
possibly biased to a degree, this civility comes to mind when discussing Juneau’s sense
o f place.
7.8.3 Implement Sis as a formal part o f an adaptive governance system
Adaptive governance argues for scientific and other types of knowledge to be
integrated into policies to advance the common interest in particular contexts through
open decision-making structures (Brunner et al., 2005). Following the inclusion o f a draft
list of sustainability indicators in Juneau’s 1995 Comprehensive Plan, no strategy or
decision making process was laid out for implementing the Sis. Perhaps it was thought at
the time that the city government would come to figure out how to use them. W hat
proved true in this study’s survey o f U.S. cities proved true for Juneau as well— few
cities’ Sis have translated into government action. As pointed out by Juneau’s mayor,
Bruce Botelho, “sustainability and its indicators are not part o f the culture [and] not
understood” (personal communication, October 12, 2010).
7.8.4 Integrate Continuum of Community Sustainability Indicator Use
Sustainability indicators could provide an integrative tool for presenting scientific
and other types o f knowledge in a more attractive and easily digestible format for
decision makers. Several ideas for ways in which Sis could be used in decision making in
151
Juneau arose in the focus group discussions. These ideas, summarized in Figure 7.6,
involve implementation at generally three levels integral to city governance: policy
makers, staff, and the public. All o f the levels presented in Figure 7.6 could use Sis for
learning by virtue o f the normative (public process grounded) and scientific information
that Sis provide.
Some o f the focus group members mentioned that unless the Sis are discussed
annually at policy meetings (Assembly retreats and other goal-setting opportunities),
taken into account in budgeting (Capital Improvement Projects and operating budget
processes), and presented often to the assembly, implementation will fail. Several other
focus group members suggested the public should be presented the Sis at least annually.
Also, there should be a mechanism for Sis to be used frequently by staff and managers.
To develop Sis that are technical enough to be meaningful yet and intuitive
enough for the middle user (staff and managers) can be challenging. Sustainability
indicators not only need to provide baseline data for decision making, but, more
importantly, they should add value to decision making for all three major user groups -
the public, policy makers, and staff.
152
7.9 Conclusion
The Juneau case study served to ground the information from earlier chapters by
incorporating focus group research that collected and compared localized data in a
particular setting.
It is noteworthy at the time o f the writing o f this dissertation, Juneau’s
sustainability indicator efforts from 1995 are being revitalized, backed by Policy
Statements and specific Implementing Action directives in the 2008 Comprehensive Plan
Update. The recent establishment o f the City o f Juneau Commission on Sustainability as
a standing Assembly organization positions the Commission well to develop and
implement sustainability indicators. The success or failure o f this renewed effort will turn
on whether it receives substantive and sustained support by the CBJ Assembly and
153
departments. The recommendations presented in this chapter may assist the JCOS in
moving forward as it develops and implements new sustainability indicators. Based on
the 2008 Comprehensive Plan provisions that direct Sis to be developed with
implementing measures, there is ample reason to hope that new Sis will be developed and
successfully implemented.
154
programs use Sis and reporting mechanisms framed by their Sis, such as Internet
dashboards and annual reports as means both to measure their city’s progress in meeting
its sustainability goals and to enfranchise community members in that progress.
The issue o f tangibility raised by several focus group members in the Juneau case
study relates to the concept o f bounded rationality that is discussed in chapter two
(Simon, 1997). The average citizen has neither the time nor resources to read about such
things as complex transportation systems. A PowerPoint visual presentation on solar-
powered houses, electric government automobiles, or other tangible objects can in
general be quicker to communicate and easier to grasp. Because of the public’s short
attention span, tangible and easy-to-understand formats such as dashboards represent the
most effective communications tools. Several focus group members mentioned that
sustainability needs to be tangible, and not just about decision making processes— the
general public needs to be able to relate to sustainability projects like recycling, energy
conservation, and solar energy panels in a way that can be seen. One reason why, in the
majority o f the cities surveyed in this study, energy conservation projects, recycling, and
other highly visible endeavors have been easier for decision makers to support is because
constituents experience these measures directly and lobby in support o f them. Concepts
like defining, measuring, and (to a lesser extent) reporting are harder for the public to see
and therefore more difficult for decision makers to support.
The concept o f bounded rationality applies to tangibility and sustainability
indicators in that Sis can help identify main drivers o f a social-ecological system and
communicate them in a much more tangible and succinct fashion. The general public and
decision makers are more likely to have time to comprehend a set of sustainability
indicators than to read and digest a large report on the complex issues underlying each
indicator. This study’s findings support the proposition that sustainability indicator
projects help to address the issue o f bounded rationality by providing information through
condensed and strategic means such as dashboards that marry sustainability principles to
public values.
156
Plan Appendix. Few planners or activists have understood how to connect the two realms
- comprehensive planning and sustainability indicators.
Unlike the time period in which Juneau’s first Sis were drafted, today other cities
in the U.S. (and around the world) have begun to develop and implement Sis and SIPs, as
reported in detail in this study. No longer is it necessary for each city to start from
scratch— cities facing challenges analogous to Juneau’s are developing integrative SI
programs from which local decision makers can now leam much.
8.1.4 Implement Sis across programs to avoid compartmentalization
One consequence o f increasing complexity and specialization within
organizational structures is the tendency o f organizations to “silo” or compartmentalize
programs. To combat the acknowledged tendency o f governments to segregate programs
and planning and to help ensure that action takes place on sustainability issues, a few
cities have established sustainability coordinator positions or an office o f sustainability to
coordinate activities, including the development o f indicators. This innovation implicitly
acknowledges that in a fractured planning environment an overarching program, which a
SIP is by its nature, will most likely fall through the cracks. In the case o f Juneau, the
Green Team established in the office o f the City Manager, has been formed to overcome
silo-ing or disaggregating tendencies, even if local decision makers might not yet put the
team ’s mission in those words. The presence o f an entity like the Green Team can make
the difference as to whether a city like Juneau’s sustainability indicators will be
integrated not only into each city program, but across all programs.
8.1.5 Bridge environmental, economic, and social domains
Sustainability indicators should include social indicators by partnering with
nongovernmental organizations, which makes this objective more readily achievable. The
inclusion o f social indicators in the sustainability indicator development process will help
to the city government in holistic evaluation o f issues.
8.1.6 Step up government leadership and coordination
Without leadership, the chances that city government personnel will take the
initiative and, in some cases, the risk, to apply sustainability indicators to their programs
159
will be very slim. In the Juneau case study, social entrepreneurs outside o f city
government led Juneau’s sustainability movement by developing the first list o f Sis, but,
as a former Mayor o f Juneau admitted in a focus group, city leadership failed to require
their implementation. Today, however, policy makers are more frequently heard using the
word “sustainability,” and the general public is more familiar with the idea. Citizen
interest in energy conservation and climate change has brought about frequent dialog on
these issues, and sustainability inevitably finds its way into those discussions. Leadership
will be needed at the top level o f policy making for any city’s Sis to be fully
implemented, as was acknowledged in this study by a majority of focus group
participants and on questionnaire responses from around the country.
In the past, perhaps the biggest factor in the non-operationalizing o f Juneau’s Sis
was lack o f Assembly involvement. Brunner, in his book on adaptive governance,
discusses a leader-follower relationship in which decision makers lead in some
circumstances and follow in others (2005). In the Juneau case study, considering the
relatively high percentage o f educated residents and the city’s active populace, leaders
may tend to simply follow what has been placed in motion - a comprehensive plan
chapter on sustainability with specific policy directives and a Juneau Commission on
Sustainability for policy and advisory assistance. However, stronger leadership will be
needed in the future for government implementation o f Sis and development o f specific
standard operating procedures.
8.1.7 Build consensus around definition of sustainability
To establish a successful local sustainability indicator program, it is essential to arrive at
some kind o f unified understanding o f the concept o f sustainability to be shared among a
city’s public and its government administrators and staff. The cross-study comparison in
this study revealed that among the communities in the United States where Sis have been
initiated by citizen groups many have been unable to gam er wider support from the
public or local government officials. Sustainable Seattle, for example, tends to be better
known to sustainability experts outside o f Seattle than among its own general populace
(G. Lawrence, personal communication, October 14, 2009).
160
The most important conditions for developing and implementing SIPs included in
Table 8.1 are: 1) a unified understanding and definition for sustainability that include at
least three principles that must be: long-term, integrative, part o f planning and public
process; 2) established implementation plan developed early in the process; and 3) use o f
organizational learning and evaluation (feedbacks).
8.2 Conclusion
Most city experts surveyed as part o f this study reported that sustainability
indicators can provide a significant contribution to decision making and to local
sustainability efforts, yet more than 90% o f the cities surveyed don’t use them. W hy is
that?
Establishing a suite o f sustainability measures for a complex social-ecological
system such as a city, with few models for how to reach nebulous and broadly defined
sustainability goals, can be difficult at best. However, facing rapidly approaching threats,
e.g., climate change and reductions in available fossil fuel energy resources, to name only
two, some city governments highlighted in this study are applying innovative methods
and establishing new procedures for addressing anticipated changes to their social-
ecological systems.
8.2.1 Adaptive learning framework
Beginning with the assumption that sustainability indicators could be used as an
adaptive governance tool for contributing to city resilience and sustainability, this study
found a few sustainability indicator projects underway in U.S. cities. Because o f the
complex nature o f city social-ecological systems, literature on several applicable theories
and concepts, ranging from resilience and sustainability theory to adaptive governance
and selected tenets o f administrative theory, provided an interdisciplinary foundation
from which to explore my assumption. An overarching adaptive learning framework was
constructed for a city scale and displayed on a heuristic IPO model to illustrate the
relationships among the various theoretical concepts, including Sis and feedback loops,
and to show how information ideally flows. Indicators and feedback loops offer an
approach for distilling city scale systems, illustrating how organizational, social, and
163
individual learning can occur. W ithin the heuristic framework, Sis represent a principal
component when taking a systems approach to community sustainability by serving as a
means for monitoring information and picking up signals o f coming change.
8.2.2 Patterns of SI use and non-use
The broad proportional stratified random sample o f 200 cities (N=645) used in the
study provided the breadth o f communities necessary for detecting several patterns o f SI
use/non-use among cities in the U.S. Many cities are engaged in environmental activities;
however, few are developing and fewer yet have operationalized sustainability indicator
projects. Most cities continue to “silo” or segregate their program indicators, including
cities that have adopted sustainability indicators, the lion’s share of which have not
implemented their Sis in a manner that elucidates systemic relationships among programs
and activities that are by their nature interconnected. O f the 200 cities surveyed, only 18
have managed to integrate sustainability indicators into governance— and, among those,
only in four cities have sustainability indicators become fully operationalized.
8.2.3 Common threads and themes
The completed questionnaires and follow-up phone interviews with
representatives from 38 cities provided more depth, and several themes and common
threads among the cities began to emerge. Among these was a lack o f integration o f
social programs into other aspects o f city governance. According to Katie Bell (personal
communication, June 17, 2010), this finding had been recognized earlier by researchers
studying resilience dynamics (see, e.g., Folke, 2006) and experts in social well-being.
Among the denominators found to be common among all studied cities arose the
importance o f leadership in the development and implementation of Sis and the need for
an integrated and condensed feedback mechanism, such as a dashboard o f indicators,
from which decision makers may easily glean the condition o f the main drivers across the
city’s social-ecological systems. Several other major themes were identified and
discussed in the dissertation’s early chapters, providing data for comparison with, and to
support insights gained from, the findings o f the single-city case study.
164
valuable in addressing ever more rapidly changing and increasingly complex social-
ecological systems.
166
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E x e m p t io n C a t e g o r y : 2
E ffe c tiv e D a te : Ju n e 2, 2 0 10
T h i s a e b o n i s in c lu d e d o n t h e J u n e 2 5 , 2 0 1 0 I R B A g e n d a .
Criteria Details
1. Air Quality US EPA Air Data: median AQI (7 points)
Americans for Nonsmoker's Rights: 100% smoke-free workplaces (1 point), 100%
smoke-free restaurants (1 point), 100% smoke-free workplaces (1 point)
2. Energy US DOE Green Power Network & Survey: Top 3 fuels used for power generation
Production and (6 points)
Conservation Survey: Energy conservation incentives offered (2 points), green power offered by
utility (2 points)
3. Environmental Survey: Number of city department that have environmental standards incorporated
Standards and into their policies (7 points)
Participation provision of environmental commissions on which citizens may served (3 points)
4. Green USGBC LEED Project Directory: Number of total LEED-certified buildings
Building (4 points) and any number of LEED-platinum buildings (1 point)
EPA Energy Star: Any number of Energy Star-rated buildings (2 points)
Survey: Use of an alternative green building certification system (1 point); sprawl
reduction strategies (2 points)
5. Green Space Survey: Total number of different types of green space, including athletic fields, city
parks, community gardens, public gardens, trail systems, waterfront and other
(6.5 points); presence of an integrated pest management plan (1 point)
Survey and Research on web sites: percentage of land that is green space
(2.5 points)
6. Recycling Survey: Total items included in recycling program (3 points); total items picked up
by recycling program (3 points); public recycling bins (1 point); percentage of waste
diverted from landfill (2 points)
EPA Municipal Solid Waste State Data and Earth 911 were consulted on occasion to
check survey responses.
7. Standard of US Census Bureau: Percentage of owner-occupied housing (2 points); families
Living living below the poverty line (2 points); median household income (2 points)
National Association of Home Builders: Housing Opportunity Index (4 points)
8. Survey: Number of green commuting options for citizens including bicycle paths,
Transportation bike sharing, bus system, carpool lanes, car sharing, dedicated bicycle lanes, light
rail, park and ride, sidewalks and trails, subway, trolley and other (8 points)
American Public Transportation Association: documented ridership for public
transportation (2 points)
9. Water Quality^ US EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System: Health-based violations
and (3 points); reporting-based violations (3 points)
Conservation Survey: Water-conservation incentives including rebates, tax credits, conservation
pricing and other (4 points)
183
Question #2 Question #4
What are the key sustainability issues? Types of Measure
1= climate change 1= no holistic measuring system
2= multimodal transit infrastructure 2= disaggregated measurement
3= managing growth, land use, open space 3= scheduled to measure
4= economy Queston # 4a Different Terms for Sis
5= lack of sustainability planning and consensus 1= no relationship
6= sprawl 2= no single term
8= adequate housing 3 = ecological ft. print
9= green building Question # 8. Other organizations
10=funding for sustainable development 1= university
11= green building Question # 9. Holistic
12 = use of historic building l=energy codes
13=water quality and quantity 2=use in all conditions
14= GHG Question # 16. One office
15= social equity l=dispersed
2= sustain office
18= sea level raising public wk/plan
19= solid waste management 3= housing office
20 = natural resource protection 4= energy codes
Question #3 Has your city defined 5= sustain office overarching response
sustainability?
1= on definition Quesition #17. Useful in Govt
2= planning 1= unerelated ans.
3= dissagregate 2= performance
4=full program 3= comm. Tool
Question 22. a) Influential Entities Question 22. b, c, d Influential Entities (NGO,
(Government) business, person, tilte, position)
1= political 1= many
2= community, dev. 2= green bldg NGO
3= public works 3= environmental
4=general services 4= economic
5= transit 5= sustainability NGO
6= finance e) other
8= office of sustain, planning 1= country
9=health 2= many
10= building 3= students
1l=solid waste 4= city employees
12= training
13=engineering
14= parks and rec
184
Question Question
# 28 Funding # 31 Social, Economic Indicators
2=always an issue 1 = unemployment
2 = gaming revenues
3 = business profits
Question
#30 Social Integration 4= businesses opening
1 = general non specific integration 5 = tax revenue
2 = collaboration with Social NGOs 6= property value
3 = low income and energy efficiency 7= area median income
4= eldely & home repair 8 = high household income
5= transport for seniors 9 = home construction
6= water & food production 10 = housing conditions
7= health Impact Assess. 11 = empty storefronts
8= looking at overlay zoning w/ sustainability 12 = change in commercial sq ft
9= environmental justice 13 = number of residential units with designated
activity centers
10=have several human health, dev. indicators 14 = mixed use corridors and major employment
centers measured over time
15 = poverty
16 = sales tax revenue
17 = rate of foreclosure
18 = availability of hourly wage jobs
19 = retail sales
20 = property tax
21 = affordable housing
22 = number of commercial sites redev. Into mixed use
corridors
23 = job generation
24 = vacancy rate
25 = home sales
24 = vacancy rate
25 = home sales
185
Question #32 Environ. Indicators Question #33 Social & Cultural Indicators
1 = level of maintenance 1= # of social and cultural orgs
2= crime rate 2 = diversity of population
3= water quality 3 = community involvement
4= bike trails 4 = # of cultural activities
5= % green space 5 = high School graduation rate
5= park system 6 = maintaining big lot sizes
6= air quality 7 = central bus district conditions
7 = preserving night sky 8 = neighbor complaints
8= clean streets 9 = support of arts and culture
9 = flooding 10 = unemployment rate
10= climate change 11 = affordable housing
11=# waste water complaints 12 = # of cultural facilities
12= ocean water standards 13 = improvement in ed. attainment rants
13 = open space 14 = level of service
14 = recycling 15 = success of health care
15 = ave. vehicle mi. traveled 16 = maintaining equestrian lifestyle
16 = preserve rural atmosphere 17 =available nightlife
17 = unkempt yards and properties 18 =police incidents
18= storm water 19 neighborhood planning and activities
19 = litter 20 = support of schools and education
20 = tree canopy 21 = arts and economy
21 = remediation of contaminated soil 22 = arts funding
22 = congestion 23 = greater choice in home efficient
23 = riparian area and streams 24 = growth in hotel and restaurant bus
Question #34 Technology Indicators Question #35 Public Policy
1 = opportunity 1 = political will
2 = city laws 2 = new city laws
3 = future use and long term viability 3 = growth & dev. of green industry
4 = encourage green bldg, housing 4 = policy changes in long tern land use plans
5 = city requirements of tech. 5 = public demand
6 = fundability 6 = education
7 = educational awareness 7= funding
8 = having mixed use 8= historic preservation
9 = zoning 9= use existing utilities and buildings.
10= green jobs 10= mayoral vision
11 = in city projects 11= GHG
12 = purchasing of fuel efficient cars 12 = renewable e
13 = tech. difficulty for permit reviews 13 = crime
14 = climate change 14= public opinion
15 = adopt international b. code 15 = media
16 = internet 16 = recognized national ranking
17 = fact sheets for elected official on how an
17 =energy conservation code action support sustainability
18 = drainage 18 = policy
19 = retention 19 = cost benefit
20 = non auto transportation 20 = recycling
21 = air and water quality
22 = open space
186
A ppendix 5. Q uestionnaire
Greetings. Th an k you for agreeing to fill out this survey. T h e survey is part of m y P h.D . research and dissertation work
about sustainability Indicators and how they shape local decision making. Y o u r participation is critical to m y study. Th is
questionnaire and information you provide will be kept confidential - nothing you s a y will be connected to your name.
W hen t am finished with the project I will send you a sum m ary of the findings of m y study and will also make m y
dissertation available on the web. Y our participation in the interview is completely voluntary and you can elect not to
answer specific questions. T h e questionnaire will take less than 20 minutes of your time.
Please contact m e at 907-465-5185 or 209-5676 (cell) or send an email to: jepowell@alaska.edu if you have questions or
comm ents.
In order to progress through this survey, please use the following navigation buttons:
Click the Exit the Survey Early button if you need to exit the survey.
Introduction
1. Does your city or organization use the term “sustainability Indicators” or a different
term?
| ~ ~| w e u se the term “su stain ab ility in d icato rs'
e im p o rtan ce
m o d e r a te ly im portant
im portant
v e r y im portant
3. Please indicate below how important each of the entities listed below were used to
develop the city’s sustainability indicators.
unim portant little im p o rta n ce m o d e ra te ly im portant im portant v e 7 im portant
contractor/consultant
□ □ □ □ □
public w orksho ps/su rveys
□ □ □ □ □
in ternet
□ □ □ □ □
you r city g o ve rn m e n t
□ □ □ □ □
other citie s
□ □ □ □ □
other g overn m en t so u r c e s
□ □ □ □ □
n o n g o v ern m e n tal
o rg an izatio n
□ □ □ □ □
other
□
P le a s e n a m e th e o th er e n titie s u s e d if a p p lic a b le .
□ □ □ □
192
1. Are the different city Indicators (e.g. social, economic and environmental) applied in an
holistic and Interdependent fashion?
O p°
o **
2. If the city applies an holistic approach using multiple indicators (e.g. social, economic
and environmental), please indicate how they are applied below:
[ " " j d ally d e c is io n s at th e s t a ff a n d m a n a g e m e n t leve l
| | lo cal le g islatio n o r o rd in a n c e s
| | operating b u d g et p ro c e s s
[ j p lan n in g
| j cap ital bu dget p r o c e s s
O ther (p le a se sp e cify)
193
O ther (p le a se sp e cify)
rzzu [—n i— zn czzn
3. Please indicate how much of a barrier each of the following factors are to
IMPLEMENTING sustainability indicators in city programs and procedures by using drop
down boxes?
F is c a l P o litic a l O rg an izatio n al P olicy
Factore I 1 t' 1 l ~1 I 1
194
Sustainability Data
1. What are the sources of sustainability data In your city? Please select those that apply.
[" j lo c a l d a ta b a s e s
□ o th e r com m u n ities
□ national d a ta b a s e s
| [ international d a ta b a s e s
O ther (p le a se sp e cify)
O o n c e e v e ry 5 y e a rs
o n c e e v e ry 4 -2 y e a rs
a n n u a lly
O no
o -
195
O
O Yes
P le a s e d e sc rib e w n y o r w h y not in th e s p a c e below .
lan d u s e plan n in g
□ □ □ □ □
b udget
□ □ □ □ □
h u m an h eatth a n d so c ia l
se rv ic e s
□ □ □ □ □
transportation
□ □ □ □ □
park s a n d recreation
□ □ □ □ □
e n v iro n m e n ts h e a lth
(air,w ater,solid w aste )
□ □ □ □ □
e n e rg y con se rvatio n
□ □ □ □ □
4. How does the city evaluate its sustainability indicators?
□ no e valu atio n p r o c e s s in p la c e
o d is a g r e e
O so m e w h a t a g r e e
a g re e
O stro n g ly a g re e
197
little im p o rtan ce
o m o d e ra te ly im portant
o im portant
v e r y im portant
2. Please name the entities that were influential in the city's sustainability indicators efforts.
c ity d e p artm e n t j |
b u sin e ss |
p e rs o n (title or position ) | |
other [____________________________________________________________________________ ^
o little im p o rtan ce
m o d e ra te ly im portant
O im portant
v e r y im portant
o little m p o rta n c e
m o d e ra te ly im portant
( ^ ) Im portant
v e r y im portant
198
Public Participation
1. When your city developed sustainability indicators, how important was public
participation?
o not im portant
so m e w h a t im portant
m o d e ra te ly im portant
im portant
O ve ry im portant
O don’t know
| [ s e p a r a te g o v e rn m e n t report a n n o u n ce d to th e public
f | part o f a b u d g e t d o cu m en t
{" [ b u d g e t d ocu m en ts
j [ throu gh th e n e w s m edia
O ther (p le a se specify)
199
Fund ing
1. Please rank the following 1 - 8 (8 meaning highest level) to show the level of funding
from each source for funding sustainability indicators.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
s ta te
O o o o o o o o
lo ca l ta x e s
o o o o o o o o
lo ca l cKy e n te rp rise fu n d s
o o o o o o o o
fe d e ra l
o o o o o o o o
nonprofit o rg a n iz a tio n
o o o o o o o o
v o lu n te e r in-kind se rv ic e s
o o o o o o o o
corpo rate
o o o o o o o o
other
o
P le a s e n a m e the o th e r s o u r c e s if a p p icab ie.
o o o o o o o
O ther, p le a s e e x p la in b e lo w .
200
Types of Indicators
1. Are SOCIAL or well being indicators integrated with economic and environmental
decision-making?
O n°
O '**
y e s . p le a s e e x p la in b elo w .
2. What are the top two indicators of the condition of your community’s ECONOMY (within
city limits)?
t
2
3. What are the top two indicators of the condition of your community’s ENVIRONMENT
(within the city limits)?
2 ;_____________________ 1
4. What are the top two Indicators of the condition of your community's SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL QUALITY OF LIFE (within the city limits)?
5. What are the top two indicators for applying sustainable TECHNOLOGY AND GREEN
BUILDING?
6. What are the top two indicators for directing PUBLIC POLICY relative to sustainability?
201
R elated Questions
1. Please select below all the applicable statements about climate change:
clim ate c h a n g e is N O T being a d d r e s s e d b y th e city
clim ate c h a n g e is part of the c ity 's su stain ab ility in d icato rs p rogram
other
If oth e r, p le a s e explain .
O no
o
If y e s , d e s c r ib e w h e re the Inform ation is a v a ila b le b e lo w (online, city hall);
3. Please select the statement(s) about energy conservation programs that apply.
o the city D O E S N O T h a v e an e n e r g y co n s e rv a tio n p rog ram o r policy
a s part of a su stain ability p ro g ram , th e city H A S a g re e n buildings program a n d a d a p te d U S G B L E E D st a n d a rd s (or sim ilar) and
O a s part of a su stain ab ility in d icato rs p rog ram , th e city H A S a g re e n build ings pro g ram an d a d a p te d U S G 8 L E E D sta n d a rd s p rog ram and
If other, p le a s e e x p la in below .
202
4. Why do you think residents leave your community? Select all that apply.
| j jo b opportu nity
|......| person a) s a fe t y o r c-im e
□ fam ily r e a s o n s
□ clim ate/ w e a th e r
□ so d a ) re a s o n s
□ health c a r e
O ther (p le a se sp ecify)
/ " / /
• One of the things that the city has is that there’s
Procedural vs. a constant tension between procedural and
Expedient expedient impulses. Assembly members come
on and they think hey, I’m going to get
something done on my time here and so that’s
one impulse.
• Then there’s the planning side, there’s a more
procedural approach to it so there’s that natural
conflict. And I think that the trick is, in what
are you trying to sustain and what are the
indicators that you’re focusing on~you
probably can get people on a theoretical level to
agree on some of those things, but regularly
they’re gonna want to jump ship.
• Community as a whole needs to be a part o f this
, process too because they need to buy into the
PuWic concepts; otherwiseyou’re not going to have
Involvement the political support to make those decisions.
• We don’t have a central vault o f Information
9) Developing. being collected from NGOs, for-profits,
R eporting. & government agencies. ,
Evaluation
• It almost seems like there needs to be an on
Learning going month-to-month evaluation of
functionalities and as you go forth [by which]
R esilience Evaluation you look at this stuff constantly off the budget
cycle and come up with those directions.
• Not a lot of feedback.. .you’re reading the tea
leaves.
goal.