To address this problem of backing into the future I turned to the World Future Society . As a result, a handful of local professionals have been meeting once a month since September to ask what can be done, if anything, to change the way our city creates its future. Rather than just grow , we have been asking how our community might develop . Smart growth or wise development should be sustainable , meeting needs of the present without diminishing the resources of future generations. All over the world people are recognizing that leadership no longer is coming from old institutions and special interest politics.
Indicators are statistical snapshots of the past and present growth of a community.
Basically, a city should measure what it wants to be, from economic, social and environmental domains. Through a civic panel process they chose some 40 indicators to measure their health. Two years later in 1993, they completed their first Indicators report. By 1998 they had done their third. For the past decade, Maureen Hart has been networking cities that are measuring their progress toward sustainability.