Comments on: PlanNYC 2030: What makes a Community Sustainable?

By: Charles Siegel

Charles Siegel — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:39:23 +0000

One key to sustainablility that is usually overlooked is giving people the ability to downshift economically by choosing to work and consume less. This is a bit off-topic, but since we are talking about sustainable lifestyles, here are a few excerpts from a booklet about this:

Currently, the economy must grow in tandem with increased productivity, regardless of how much people actually want to consume. Because of improved technology, the average American worker can produce about 2.3% more each year, which adds up to an eight-fold increase in a century.

To stabilize world climate, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% during this century, and there is little or no chance of doing this if per capita output grows eight-fold during this century.

We must slow growth by giving people the option of using increased productivity to reduce their work hours.

A survey by the Center for the New American Dream found that half of all Americans with full-time jobs would prefer to work a four-day week at 80% of their current pay.

Yet most Americans today have no choice of work hours. The economist Juliet Schor has found that, if the average American male worker reduced his hours by 20%, he would reduce his earnings by 50%, because part-time workers have lower wages and fewer benefits.

To give workers the opportunity to choose their hours, we need to:
-End Discrimination Against Part-Time Workers
-Create More High-Quality Part-Time Jobs

You can read this four-page booklet at
http://www.preservenet.com/studies/WorkTimeGlobalWarming.pdf

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:03:54 +0000

That was my conclusion as well someguy and mfs. We need to make sure from the ground level that the infrastructure will not just be efficient nominally, but really encourage more sustainable lifestyles. The role of non-profits and community groups to shape the infrastructure is just as important as building it in the first place. And perhaps there needs to be more of an effort to consider the softer sides of building a sustainable community. That combination of improving lifestyles and infrastructure would be very powerful.

By: mfs

mfs — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:24:33 +0000

some of the best infrastructure we have in the City is widespread and small-scale, like traffic lights, corner trash cans, sidewalks, public mailboxes, etc. I hope that their definition of infrastructure doesn’t preclude this kinds of devices, and hence precludes any livable streets goals.

By: someguy

someguy — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:42:17 +0000

Great analysis. However:

“They are not really talking at all about how to build small scale human-based systems that are the foundation of truly sustainable communities.”

And if they were talking about it, with that kind of wonky language in particular, they would be greeted with blank stares, don’t you think?

Also, as for the fact that it’s only concerned with infrastructure, I would think they had to draw the line of their scope somewhere. Infrastructure is something tangible and easy to talk about in plain terms that in general the city can affect pretty easily. They’ve already probably bitten off more than they can chew. I wonder how much of PlaNYC will end up being anything more than a nice exercise in letting a cabal of academics run wild with worthy but unrealizable planning ideas?

Not trying to be pessimistic – I happen to think it’s an incredibly important effort – but just trying to help keep that realism in our enviro-progressive den here =)