Then I say the earth belongs to each . . . It follows that environmental protection and economic development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes. A community must be supported from below - by its inhabitants, present and future. Certain places, through the peculiar combination of physical, cultural, and, perhaps, spiritual characteristics, inspire people to care for their community.
Theses are the places where sustainability has the best chance of taking hold.
The focus and scale of sustainability efforts depend on local conditions, including resources, politics, individual actions, and the unique features of the community. The sustainable communities approach has been applied to issues as varied as urban sprawl, inner-city and brownfield redevelopment, economic development and growth, ecosystem management, agriculture, biodiversity, green buildings, energy conservation, watershed management, and pollution prevention. Many of these issues and other community problems cannot easily be addressed by traditional approaches or traditional elements within our society. A sustainable community is one whose energy economy does not use more energy in a given time than falls on its hinterlands as sunlight in that time, and in which the material economy is circular rather than linear.