Sustainable Development: Prosperity WITHOUT Growth

[Dover]

Sustainable Development: Prosperity Without Growth

The following is an excerpt from "Sustainable Development: Prosperity Without Growth," Chapter 1 of the Economic Renewal Guide: A Collaborative Process for Sustainable Community Development. The entire chapter can be downloaded from the Communities section of the Library.


The assumption that economic prosperity requires growth seems so reasonable that most of us don't think much about it. After all, it's what we've always been told; politicians, business boosters, economists, and the media all seem to take it for granted. The assumption is so pervasive that virtually every American community is looking for ways to grow out of its economic problems, even when those problems are themselves the result of growth.

The trouble is, the word "growth" has two fundamentally different meanings: "expansion" and "development." Expansion means getting bigger; development means getting better, which may or may not involve expansion. This is no mere semantic distinction. Many communities have wasted a lot of time and energy pursuing expansion because that's what they thought they needed, when what they really needed was development. To avoid confusion, let's define growth here only as getting bigger—expansion—and development as getting better.

Though a sound economy requires development, including vigorous business activity, it doesn't necessarily require expansion of community size. An analogy can be made with the human body. Human growth after maturity is cancer. When a town continues to expand after maturity, its cancer becomes manifest in many ways: spiteful controversy, higher taxes, traffic, sprawl, lost sense of community. Sound familiar?

But after reaching physical maturity, humans continue to develop in many beneficial and interesting ways: learning new skills, gaining deeper wisdom, cultivating new relationships, and so on. Similarly, a community can develop itself without necessarily expanding. It can create affordable housing, protect public safety, and improve employment, health, cultural, and educational opportunities. In fact, a good definition of development is the creation of jobs, income, savings, and a stronger community.

This is not to say that all expansion is bad, but it's essential to distinguish it from development in order to make choices that truly benefit the community.

Read more: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid366.php

[Maple]

1. Yes, it's called stagnation

Economic, technological and cultural.

Ask Rome....oh wait....

[OneBlueSky]

3. not so . . .

sustainability without growth MUST be a human goal, since unlimited growth in a finite world is impossible . . .

[Shyriath]

5. Is too so!

Unlimited growth in ONE finite world is impossible, but there are other planets... many with usable resources, and (as far as we can tell) no organisms already present that we have to worry about killing off.

To space!

[cprise]

4. Focus should be on development

...not 'growth', which should be taken by environmentalists as a desire for increased resource consumption.

If development finds ways to do more with less resources, then this can be considered progress that is sustainable.

[Mikimouse]

2. Disaster researchers have been arguing about this

for a long time. In terms of the drive to expansion, we very often expand into areas that are more likely to be vulnerable to natural events. The fact the there are humans in those areas makes an event a disaster (some call this the European model, but it came, as I understand it, from an American geographer). In terms of disaster research, sustainable development really eans intelligent development, in other words, development in terms of planning for the future and avoiding the obvious pitfalls that place people in harms way. Grand Forks, ND is a good example of developing, at least in part, a sustainable 'aera'. After the '97 floods, the most vulnerable areas near the Red river were not rebuilt, but rather turned into a 'green area' along the river, creating a non-residential, but recreational area. For a great read on sustainable communities, take a lok at Dennis Miletti's: Disasters by Design.