SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

Code 3675

Lecture Eight

PROF. DR. NOMANA ANJUM

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY
ISLAMABAD
Unit 7 Community and Sustainability

7.1Design for Living, introduction

7.2 Complexity and Sustainability
7.3 Development of Community
7.4 Community Governance and Democratic
Renewal
7.5 Capacity Building through Community
7.6 Community Leadership
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally

8.1 Sustainable Energy Resources in

Sustainable Communities
8.2 Environmental and Social Responsibilities
8.3 Sustainable Food Strategies from
Neighborhood
8.4 Planning for Non-Motorized and Motorized
Transport options
8.5 Managing Against crime in Realities
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.1 Sustainable Energy Resources in
Sustainable Communities
In the postwar period, energy supply has been controlled
first by large nationalized monopolistic utilities, then
replaced by large privatized utilities.
In each case control is very remote from the energy user
giving little incentive for the consumer to take
responsibility for the adverse impacts of the use of
energy in their home or business. During the late 1990s,
efforts to introduce competition into domestic energy
supply have opened the possibility for energy utilities
with community stakeholders, energy purchasing
cooperatives and other ‘community-based‘ structures
dealing with energy.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.1 Sustainable Energy Resources in
Sustainable Communities
At the turn of the millennium, the UK energy supply
industry is in a period of dramatic transformation
affecting both organization and ownership. In the space
of little more than 15 years we have seen the big state
owned energy supply monopolies broken up and
privatized. The organization of energy supply has
moved from a position where central and long term
planning predominated to the current situation where the
short term thinking of competition and market forces
has a much stronger influence on what power stations
are built and which energy resources are used.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.1 Sustainable Energy Resources in
Sustainable Communities
Many of the changes in the organization of energy
supply have been made possible by technological
developments in information technology and metering
of energy.
The complex trading arrangements that now exist in the
gas and electricity markets would not have been
possible without the ability to track and transfer data
relating to distribution of fuel and the millions of
transactions as customers pay different suppliers for
their energy. The current market structures would not
have been possible without the microchip.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.1 Sustainable Energy Resources in Sustainable
Communities
Sustainable Energy in the Liberalized Energy Market
The concept of sustainable development embraces
concerns for protecting the environment, equitable
distribution of resources within a sound economy. Such
concerns do not fit that well with the operation of
liberalized markets. The experience in the UK is that
liberalized markets are not meeting social and
environmental needs. A massive switch from coal to gas
fired power stations has had some environmental
benefits. But these benefits have been a side effect of the
drive for more economically efficient generating
technology that delivers enhanced dividends to the
shareholders.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.2 Environmental and Social Responsibilities
While the ‘traditional’ renewable energy sources such as wind,
solar, and hydro can be valuable sources of energy to a
sustainable community, the most readily accessible
resources that could be considered as ‘renewable’ are waste
products. The use of waste products for generating heat and
electricity is a way of recycling and reusing these resources:
Organic wastes such as sewage, putrescible municipal waste,
waste food processing etc.
Combustible wastes such as scrap wood, paper and card,
car tyres etc.
Waste beat. Towns and cities radiate heat but still many people
live in cold and unhealthy homes. Harnessing the waste heat
from offices and process industries is a largely untapped
energy resource
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.2 Environmental Responsibility
In Denmark, where local utilities can be wholly or
part owned by their customers, it is not uncommon
for a vote at a public meeting to be the main
planning approval needed.
The weighing up of personal energy needs and
environmental concerns becomes very real when
the source of your energy is on your doorstep and
you have a stake in energy developments.
The result is that environmentally benign energy
sources and the cleanest energy conversion
technology become the obvious choice.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
Social Responsibility
Local control brings two very positive gains in managing
debt and dealing with arrears for a community run utility
when compared to a conventional utility. The first is
that failure to pay for your energy when you are able, will
reflect on your standing in the community. The evidence
in housing shows that in tenant run housing
cooperatives there is a far lower level of rent arrears
than among other social landlords. This suggests that if
you are in debt to a utility in which you and your
neighbours have a stake, you will be far more
motivated to pay up as soon as you can.
This will reduce the debt management costs of the local
utility.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
Social Responsibility
Where there is a genuine problem for a household in
managing to pay for its energy services, a community run
utility is likely to be more responsive to their needs. At the
most basic, this might mean providing a payment method
that aids the consumer in effectively managing their
household budget. Recent experience with the introduction
of domestic gas competition has seen a reduction in the cash
payment methods available to consumers of new suppliers
and the growth in price differentials between prepayment
meter and Direct Debit tariffs.
These trends are evidence of an erosion of basic services in
terms of choice of payment method to the poorer sections
of society which makes them more vulnerable to debt
problems.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.3 Sustainable Food Strategies from
Neighborhood
It is an essential component of any settlement which is
striving for sustainability that it should be able to produce
as much of its food needs as it can, and that affordable
organic and ethically sourced produce should be
available to everyone.
Our cities and any new urban development should be
green oases, creating abundance and beauty rather
than the sterile landscapes of tarmac and low
maintenance shrubs which characterize most modern
developments.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.3 Sustainable Food Strategies from
Neighborhood

Urban food growing projects are not a luxury

but a necessity which arises from the need for
solutions to a wide range of problems. Often
these problems aren’t seen as being linked, but
any urban neighbourhood which professes to
be sustainable must recognize the need for an
approach to providing food for its residents
which acknowledges and tackles them all.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.3 Sustainable Food Strategies from
Neighborhood
As Christopher Alexander states in his seminal work A Pattern
Language (1977):
“Parks, street trees, and manicured lawns do very little to establish the
connection between us and the land. They teach us nothing of its
productivity, nothing of its capacities.
People who are born, raised, and live out their lives in cities
simply do not know where the food they eat comes from or what a
living garden is like.
Their only connection with the productivity of the land comes from
packaged tomatoes on the supermarket shelf. But contact with the
land and its growing process is not simply a quaint nicety from the
past that we can let go of casually. More likely, it is a basic part of the
process of organic security. Deep down, there must be some sense of
insecurity in city dwellers who depend entirely upon the
supermarkets for their produce.”
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.4 Planning for Non-Motorized and Motorized
Transport options
A visitor from another planet might reasonably conclude that the
last few decades have been dedicated to satisfying the urban
dweller’s passion for movement by motor vehicle.
Enormous investment has been poured into building and widening
roads, creating vast areas for the parking of cars and designing
residential and shopping areas to cater for the needs of the motor
vehicle. The character of towns, villages and the countryside has
been radically altered.
The pleasure of walking and cycling has decreased as journeys have
become less direct, more dangerous and polluted. Many recent
developments put the vehicle first leaving people to negotiate their
way past motor vehicles in unpleasant surroundings to reach their
destination. All too often, public spaces have become compounds for
cars rather than places for people.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.4 Planning for Non-Motorized and Motorized
Transport options

Fortunately there is a desire to move away from this

concept of providing free and unlimited movement for
vehicles. A more rational approach is emerging which
focuses on providing access for people whilst causing
minimum damage to communities, our heritage and the
environment. However, this will not be an easy task as it
entails reversing a very strong trend of accelerating
traffic growth in recent years. People are now travelling
further and more often than in the past.
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.5 Managing Against crime in Realities

Community safety is an essential prerequisite for a stable

and sustainable neighbourhood. A neighbourhood or
locality is doomed if it is perceived or experienced as
unsafe. Most ‘quality of life’ surveys show that crime and
fear of victimization are two of the top deleterious
ingredients of urban living (see, for example, Burrows
and Rhodes, 1998).
Unit 8: Managing Resources Locally
8.5 Managing Against crime in Realities

The notion of actual neighbourhoods functioning within

urban villages reconciles well with current thinking on
community safety. The higher per capita crime rates in
cities and large towns, compared to rural areas, is
usually explained by the anonymity and high mobility
within cities. Self contained, cohesive communities offer
much higher levels of informal surveillance and social
control. It has also been found that crime and antisocial
behaviour are less prevalent where people feel they
have a stake in, or ‘ownership of’, their neighbourhood.
Discussion