Why is sustainability important? (planner, transportation, landscape, development)

[Plannedcities]

I'm new to this forum so I did a search for sustainability/sustainable/urban sustainability. What did this return? A few discussions for sure, but no main titles. Why is this? Are urban planners at all interested in sustainability?

For example, what if urban planners have too many competing pressures to think about sustainability. There are just too many applications which don't meet the required standards and pressure coming in from the outside to simply approve it anyway. The demands of these correspondences just pile up.

Or what if urban planners would love to have some urban sustainability but it's too vague and they don't know what it really means. Yes, lets have bike paths and walkability and a sustainability cake stall - That's about all there is to it, isn't it?

Hey, it's even possible that urban planners are bristling full of optimism and hope for a new dawn of urban landscape. It's obvious what needs to happen and that is why urban planning was the obvious career choice to begin with. Yet, when it comes to the crunch there are so many technical requirements that an army of consultants are required just to do one simple project! Ouch!

Or you want to make urban sustainability part of your policies but you can't get it approved because people say it will cost too much. In business or in city council... take your pick.

I'm just curious. What do you think? Have you any experiences to share?

[nybbler]

Seems vague to me.

[mhays25]

That's like "why should people have ethics?" Kind of a broad question. Basically we shouldn't be evil, exterminate other species without good reason, hurt our own health...

[Plannedcities]

Originally Posted by nybbler

Seems vague to me.

So nybbler you reckon that sustainability is nice sounding but it would be good to have some more details? Specifics such as: the list of cool initiatives to implement...

[Plannedcities]

Originally Posted by mhays25

That's like "why should people have ethics?" Kind of a broad question. Basically we shouldn't be evil, exterminate other species without good reason, hurt our own health...

So mhays25, if sustainability is like ethics, does that mean it's a bit ridiculous to have a sustainability plan? Like having an ethics plan. This month we are going to make little old lady month, where we get everybody to help little old ladies. Next month is don't exterminate other species month... etc.

[GatsbyGatz]

Originally Posted by Plannedcities

So mhays25, if sustainability is like ethics, does that mean it's a bit ridiculous to have a sustainability plan? Like having an ethics plan. This month we are going to make little old lady month, where we get everybody to help little old ladies. Next month is don't exterminate other species month... etc.

Sustainable planning and management visions promote interconnected green space, a multi-modal transportation system, and mixed-use development. Sustainable urban planners aspire to reduce pollution and create a balance between built and natural systems. Mhays made the point that, like ethics, it's rather common sense for urban planners to consider health and environmental resources in their decisions.

The challenge that current urban planners face is that most cities are effectively built out and so most urban planning done these days is more about correcting flaws in our current infrastructure. It's safe to say that the land use strategies and infrastructure built by past generations is very flawed, and so urban planning done today is corrective and going to be inherently imperfect due to the poor state of most of our cities.

[Plannedcities]

Thanks GatsbyGatz, I get your point. Urban planning is inherently considering urban sustainability, despite being constrained by the existing environment. Would you say that sustainability is thus so deeply integrated into urban planning that this is why forum posts don't explicitly discuss it and put sustainability into the title?

[Plannedcities]

I would love to restart the conversation with a different question. What do you think is more interesting?
- What is it like to try to implement urban sustainability?
- Why aren't urban planners talking about urban sustainability more?
- What would really help get you unstuck with urban sustainability?

[mhays25]

Your questions are too big to answer.

If something is important it would be a "bit rediculous" to have a plan? I think you meant to say "to not have a plan"?

Sustainability is a hugely wide topic with a million potential goals. Anything from ruining less land to improving air to reducing power bills to being visibly sustainable to lease a building to reducing climate change.

[Plannedcities]

Hey mhays,
Admittedly it is very big to answer some of these questions. Sustainability is important, as you have pointed out. To have an exhaustive discussion about the different aspects of sustainability requires more than one evening with a bottle of wine.

I do want to clarify my point. If you look at my first question it was rather focused on why the planners in the forum HERE are not talking more about sustainability. I probably could have written the title of my post better to start with. To rectify this situation I have added a poll. It's public so everyone can learn about what everyone else thinks about sustainability.

Given that it was my first post here and I didn't know that people were actually going to ignore the text following the title, I followed up with a comment (#8) that perhaps a better question was in order. I proposed three questions, saying: What do you think is more interesting?

I would love to hear what you think as you clearly believe sustainability is important.
Thanks!