About Us | Aerotropolis | Sustainability | Provincial Planning | City Planning

Book Review

This book provides a wealth of real life examples of communities, large and small, using a sustainable planning process to enhance the quality of life for all citizens. For those not familiar with The Natural Step process, it is a sustainability planning process based on four simple principles of sustainability and equity (www.naturalstep.org). It is being used in a wide variety of settings, from businesses to communities, and there are a few cases where it is guiding national strategies toward sustainability.

What is both useful and exciting about this book is that it provides actual examples of what communities have actually done to plan for more sustainable and enjoyable communities. It describes tangible results across diverse planning areas, contributing to the institutionalization of these changes; and it accomplishes this relatively quickly.

In addition to describing what has been accomplished, thereby making it clear what is possible, the book also does a good job of descrbing the process by which these impressive systems changes can come about. One of the many interesting aspects of this planning process is that it is not confined to environmentalists; The American Planning Association as also adopted it as a useful approach to community planning.

It is an approach to progressive planning worthy of serious consideration in Hamilton.

Jack Santa Barbara