~::Urban Planning & Development::~

• Urban planning and development has long been fixated on the community's hard infrastructure the sewers, the roads and the electrical, gas and water utilities and other aspects of the physical structure that define the community's form. In the past decade or two, there has been a growing concern with the environmental sustainability of the community. This has significant implications for the design and operation of the hard infrastructure ecological management of storm water and sewage; energy, water and other resource conservation; an emphasis on walk / bike / transit- supportive environments and so on.
• But a community is much, much more than its physical form. A community is composed of people as well as the places where they live; it is as much a social environment as a physical environment. Thus, communities must not only be environmentally sustainable, they must also be socially sustainable.
• Of course, social sustainability cannot be created simply through the physical design of the community but then neither can environmental sustainability be created by physical design alone. Physical design cannot ensure that individuals, families and communities will lead environmentally sustainable lifestyles, although it can help to make such environmentally sustainable choices more easy. Equally, while there is much that can be done on the "design" of the soft infrastructure of the community to ensure its social sustainability, the physical design of the community can make it either easier or more difficult for communities to be socially sustainable. Thus there is a vital need to integrate the physical and social design of communities if we are to create communities that are both environmentally and socially sustainable.
• In discussing sustainability both social and environmental it is important to understand that both of them require a system of economic activity that is compatible with and not destructive of either the ecological web of life or the social web of life of which we are a part, and upon which we depend for our health, well-being and quality of life. As the Canadian Public Health Association noted in its report on human and ecosystem health:
• Thus, any discussion of socially sustainable communities must include a discussion of the physical design of the community and the economic system of the community. In this series of four columns I will discuss the concept of social sustainability, the implications for urban design and planning, the "new economics" of environmentally and socially sustainable communities, and the integration of these concepts in a human development strategy.