1. Sustainability and Autodependency
Norman W. Garrick
Lecture 6

2. What is Sustainability?
Sustainability is the stewardship of
natural and human-made resources
so that the quality of living and
the health of our cities, countryside and open space
do not deteriorate from one generation to the next
Cervero, The Transit Metropolis: Transit and the Changing World

3. Talking the Talk
Politicians in Jamaica and many other third world countries are very aware of the need to ‘talk’ sustainability but the policies often don’t add up to changes that support environmental sustainability. Environmental and health sustainability is often compromised in the interest of economic growth.
The situation in the USA is slightly different – often technological fixes are offered up as the solution that will cause us to achieve environmental health without changing any of the economic or social issues that impact sustainability
So how do we convert the seemingly vague concept of sustainability into a concrete framework for guiding policy and design?

4. The Three-Legged Stool
The common model of sustainability is made up of a triad of economic, social, and environmental sustainability
Sustainability
Environment
Society
Economy

5. The Problem with the Three-legged Stool Model
The three-legged stool model does not help us address hard questions like
How do we improve people’s quality of life without necessarily increasing consumption to levels that might cause environmental degradation?
Can we have a sustainable economy without the need for constantly increasing levels of consumption?
Can we satisfy people’s desire for access without environmentally damaging levels of mobility?

6. The Starting Place for Understanding Sustainability
Source:

7. Why Protecting the Biosphere is the Bottom-line for Sustainability?
We only have the one biosphere – this biosphere consists of natural ecosystems at different scales. It is a closed system with only one energy input and no output for waste Human activities have a big impact on the biosphere We need to re-structure these activities so that we can satisfy our needs and desires without continuing to cause harm to the biosphere

8. The Three-Legged Stool
Sustainability
Environment
Society
Economy

9. The Problem with the Three-Legged Stool
The triad model of sustainability is considered by some to be flawed because it does not explicitly recognize that environmental sustainability requires changes to social and economic institutions – instead, it talks about balance It is universally acknowledge that three dimensions of sustainability - environmental, social and economic – is a useful and valid way of conceptualizing this issue What is in dispute is the order in which they are considered. The three-legged stool does not imply any order or priority

10. The Appropriate Order for the Three Domains
The important shift is to recognize that the economy is the creation of society, and not the other way around. The economy is thus framed by the social context in which it occurs. Further, both society and the economy operate within the context of a natural environment of limited capacity. This lead to the nested box model of sustainability in which the order of priority is environment, social, and economy sustainability

11. Nested Model of Sustainability
Environment
Society
Economy
Addressed by Nicholas Low’s Nested Model
Wrong to assume this model suggests NO or minimized growth, it really sets the context that economic growth has a responsibility to society and environment
(LOW AND GLEESON 2003, HART 2006)

12. Interpreting the Nested Box Model of Sustainability
It is important not to take this model to mean that the economy, or economic considerations, are not important Rather it should be interpreted as saying that growth should serve the interest of the society and be environmentally sustainable. The most extreme examples of economic growth without social or environmental sustainability can be found in many “oil rich” countries around the world. The Nested box model also contains echoes of Littman's point about striving for ‘development’ not just ‘growth’

13. The Brown and the Green Agendas for Sustainability
Some writers talk about sustainability in terms of a ‘brown’ and ‘green’ agenda
‘Brown’ agenda addresses issues associated with environmental health. This includes unsanitary living conditions, hazardous pollutants in the air and water, and the accumulations of solid waste.
These are problems that have immediate environmental impacts and tend to burden mostly lower income groups in society.
The green agenda focuses on how urban-based production, consumption and waste generation contribute to ecosystem disruption, resource depletion and global climate change.
These issues are problems that have more long term impacts that are dispersed and delayed – in other words, they threaten long-term ecological sustainability.
From an article by McGranahan and Satterthwaite in
Pugh, Sustainable Cities in Developing Countries, Earthscan, pg

14. The Brown versus the Green Agenda
According to McGranahan and Satterthwaite one important reason for distinguishing between the Brown and Green agendas is that conflicts sometimes arise between proponents of each of these agendas about which one should be accorded priority. According to the authors, these problems are especially acute in the developing world, but they also arise in the developed world. The only way to address these potential conflicts is to understand and acknowledge their existence. The authors state that those conflicts can best be minimized if both agendas are taken seriously.

15. Haughton’s Five Equity Principles of Sustainability
One more way of conceptualizing sustainability is based on Graham Haughton’s five interconnected equity principles.
Haughton’s Five Equity Principles are
Intragenerational equity
Procedural equity
Intergenerational equity
Transfrontier equity
Interspecies equity

16. Brown Agenda based on Haughton’s Equity Principles
The brown agenda focuses on the following two principles of equity: intragenerational equity, and procedural equity.
Intragenerational Equity addresses the need for all urban dwellers to have healthy and safe living and working conditions and the corresponding infrastructure and services.
Procedural Equity addresses the legal rights for all persons to have safe and healthy living, and working environment, that they are treated fairly and that they can engage in a democratic decision making process about the management of the urban centers in which they live.

17. Green Agenda based on Haughton’s Five Equity Principles
The green agenda on the other hand is described as focusing on three of the principles of equity: intergenerational equity, transfrontier equity, interspecies equity.
Intergenerational Equity promotes the idea that urban development should not draw on finite resource bases and degrade ecological systems in ways that compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Transfrontier Equity prevents urban consumers and producers from transferring environmental costs to other people and ecosystems.
Interspecies Equity recognizes the rights of other species

18. Sustainability And Autodependency
Lewis Mumford in his book “The City and the Highway” points out that the car was so good that many people thought that we did not need any other mode of transportation. The inevitable endgame of this thinking is the development of what Mumford refers to as a ‘monochromatic’ transportation system and what Cervero calls ‘autodependency’.

19. What is Autodependency?
Auto-dependency implies an over-reliance on the automobile for almost all our transportation needs.

20. Defining Autodependency
Peter Newman writes that the guiding question for urban development is whether or not we are making the city more autodependent. His definition of autodependency is interesting. He considers a city autodependent if a thirty minute average journey to work is attainable only by car. Why thirty minutes? Well the thirty minutes is derived from the idea that there is a travel time budget for travel to work that has remained essentially constant throughout the course of history. This constant travel time budget is about 30 minutes and is sometimes referred to as the Marchette Constant.
Ref: Low and Gleeson, Making Urban Transportation Sustainable, Palgrave MacMillan, pg

21. Is Autodependency Sustainable?
Cervero raises the issue of ‘sustainable automobility’ What is ‘sustainable automobility’? Does a sustainable auto address all the issues of sustainability?