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Sustainable communities: what should our priorities be?
Author(s) -
Brown Valerie A.,
Ritchie Jan
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
health promotion journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 2201-1617
pISSN - 1036-1073
DOI - 10.1071/he06211
Subject(s) - sustainability , sustainable community , public relations , action (physics) , international community , politics , sustainable development , sustainable living , collective action , sociology , promotion (chess) , political science , environmental ethics , environmental resource management , environmental planning , ecology , geography , economics , law , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
Issue addressed Reports of the degeneration of Earth's natural life‐support systems have focused the minds of those in the scientific, political and general communities on how to avert a collapse. For many health promotion practitioners the effective unit of social change is the community, the interconnected web of people and place that makes up a human living system. The challenge lies in determining just what makes up a sustainable community under 21st Century conditions. Method This paper reviews major national and international programs working towards sustainable communities, in order to arrive at strategies that establish the necessary interconnectedness and collective action within each individual community. Results Moving to a sustainable community under these conditions appears to meet the conditions of a ‘wicked problem’, that is, one that lies outside the present capacity of the society to resolve it. The move therefore calls for guided social change. Conclusion The priorities for guiding the change to a sustainable community involve collective thinking and action as a mutual learning process among the affected individuals, communities, experts, and organisations, towards a holistic sustainability goal. So what? Recent developments in the field of health promotion focus on the wider social determinants of health. Added to those determinants is the need to ensure that 21st Century environmental systems can continue to sustain life on Earth. Health promotion practice has come to involve the social change necessary to ensure a healthy, just and sustainable future. Acquiring the strategies of the collective thinking and action that establish sustainable communities is the most constructive way for health promotion to move forward along this critical path.