PCSD Recommendations on Sustainable Communities ('99)
PCSD Recommendations on Sustainable Communities ('96)
METROPOLITAN AND RURAL STRATEGIES
(Final Report,1999)
Recommendation 1
Reinvigorate and advance public education on sustainable community development.
Action 1
The Administration, in partnership with leaders in all relevant sectors and the Smart Growth Network, should launch a public action campaign on smart growth. These
partners should sponsor a five-year national campaign and dialogue addressing land use and growth issues through community and business action. The campaign should be
launched at the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America, which will take place May 2-5, 1999. The campaign should ask communities throughout America to identify natural assets and local and regional land use and growth issues; assess the impacts of sprawl-related problems; identify possible solutions and their benefits; identify ways to measure progress (i.e., establish indicators of progress); and make commitments to form or strengthen partnerships to implement solutions. The campaign would link to three other efforts:
(1) National incentive programs for Smart Growth and Regional Cooperation;
(2) Growing Smart, a five-year project funded by the federal government which provides a compendium of useful tools for states, regional entities, and local jurisdictions to consider, adopt, adapt, and use; and
(3) Land-Based Classification Standards (LBCS), a project funded by several federal agencies and the American Planning Association. LBCS standardizes a broad variety of land use and development data collected and stored at the local, regional, state, and national levels, enabling jurisdictions, agencies, and institutions to share data more easily.
Following the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America, the Administration should work with leaders in all sectors and prominent civic journalists and media specialists to develop a communications strategy that can continue to promote, explain, and popularize sustainability and livability goals and concerns.
Action 2
The Administration, in partnership with others, should reinvigorate the Education for Sustainability program. Federal agencies should increase their activities to promote
lifelong learning about sustainable development, including the Sustainable Development Extension Network, as proposed in Sustainable America and Education for Sustainability.28 The federal government should also encourage partnerships among businesses, localities, and regional organizations to develop and implement educational programs and curricula on sustainability for children and young adults. For example, corporate leaders from forest-products company Louisiana-Pacific sponsor the Portland, Oregon, crew of the Salmon Corps, a program that engages young Native Americans and other at-risk youth in the restoration of salmon habitats in the Columbia River Basin.While educating young people about their heritage and traditions, the program provides useful skills and helps restore critical salmon and wildlife habitats throughout the region. In the
South Bronx, the Phipps Community Development Corporation, based at an innovative, city-funded .Beacon School, which combines gang intervention and workforce programs with organizing around community environment and livability issues.
Recommendation 2
Institutionalize knowledge through learning networks and technical assistance.
Action 1
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its land grant system, responding to the mandate of the PCSD and as a part of the Sustainable Development Extension
Network, should create a learning infrastructure for sustainable communities. The infrastructure will provide information on how to accomplish specific community
development tasks, connect with potential regional partners, and access potential funding sources. It will do this through a "high-tech/high-touch" approach compromised of electronic, paper, and direct contact components. As part of this effort, the Council for Excellence in Government should convene a group of partners within USDA to work with the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities in order to bring together the various technical assistance services now available within the land grant system. This group would work with the Council on Environmental Quality, leaders from all sectors, as well as USDA's four regional Rural Development Centers, its Resource, Conservation and Development Councils, and its Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas program. It would also link to HUD's Office of Rural Housing and Economic Development, which is creating an information clearinghouse on innovative housing and
economic development strategies, as well as funding for direct grants for development projects.
Action 2
As part of a larger community-based conservation education strategy, organizations serving local government should partner with natural resource agencies to help local
government mangers include and value green infrastructure in community plans. Local government managers are in a key position to facilitate community involvement and
spur activities that protect and sustain natural resources.The objectives here should be to increase awareness of the economic and social values associated with green infrastructure and natural resource stewardship, provide inclusive community-driven strategic planning on future growth and development, and demonstrate improved decision-making through the use of environmental data and geographic information system (GIS) planning tools.
Action 3
Federal, state, and local agencies should coordinate their technical assistance programs to overcome program fragmentation and duplication. For example, the state of
Maryland has created the Revitalization Center in Baltimore, which co-locates representatives from all agencies involved in revitalization and smart growth activities to
facilitate greater interaction and ease of access by the communities they serve. The Multi-Agency Service Team, jointly sponsored by the Maine State Planning Office and the
Maine Rural Development Council, brings together public and quasi-public sector service providers to resolve problems facing small and medium-sized secondary wood products
manufacturers in the state.29 Such coordinated technical assistance efforts should target underserved groups.
Recommendation 3
Disseminate and improve accessibility to user-friendly information and improved analytical methods and tools relevant to sustainable community development.
Action 1
The Administration should partner with leaders from relevant sectors to design a central, user-friendly information clearinghouse on sustainability. The federal government, community-based organizations, and national associations have already accomplished a great deal in linking sustainability information available on the World Wide Web.
These partners should develop an information support system that can address questions stimulated by the National Town Meeting and facilitate information exchange among sustainable community development initiatives. This clearinghouse should also address how to reach low-income and rural communities that may not have access to Internet resources.
Action 2
Federal agencies and foundations should improve the capability of communities to use GIS information in support of place-based ecosystem management, sustainable land use, and community reinvestment. In particular, these stakeholders should support a community/federal information partnership in which the Secretary of the Interior
would lead a four-year interagency initiative to advance the capacity of communities and regions to create and use geospatial data, and improve federal agencies. Capabilities
to provide community information. These agencies should provide incentives in the form of demonstration grants, training and technical assistance, or subsidies for software upgrades where needed.
Action 3
The U.S. Department of Transportation, in cooperation with EPA, the U.S. Department of Energy, HUD, and the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, should establish
a comprehensive program to develop new and improved analytical tools for land use, transportation, and environmental planning. States and localities need useful tools for analyzing and modernizing their planning laws and techniques, and for guiding public and private development in a sustainable manner. This effort should recognize ongoing work by professional associations that have developed planning tools on smart growth with the support of federal funding, such as the American Planning Association's Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook and Clearinghouse.
Action 4
The federal government, foundations, and technical assistance providers should design and disseminate tools and methods that can assess the benefits of investments in
sustainable community strategies. In particular, tools are needed that will capture the cross-benefits of investments. For example, PLACE3S (Planning for Community Energy,
Economic, and Environmental Sustainability) software, a land use and urban design model sponsored by the Department of Energy, identifies the energy impacts of
land use decisions. Other tools are needed to estimate more precisely the benefits of investments in green infrastructure, materials reuse and resource efficiency strategies,
and sustainable rural strategies.
Recommendation 4
Promote technical assistance on the use of indicators and evaluation methods.
Action 1
Civic organizations, foundations, and other nongovernmental organizations, together with the Administration, leaders from other sectors, and the Interagency Working Group on
Sustainable Development Indicators, should sponsor a series of workshops to help citizens use to existing or new tools to track progress on sustainable community development. As part of this effort, the Council on Environmental Quality should chair a working group of representatives of the National Partnership to Reinvent Government, the Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators, and the Federal Geographic Data Committee. The working group would provide technical assistance to
communities and regions that wish to develop indicators, benchmarks, or other performance measures to assist local decision-making processes. The working group should work with the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, which has launched a sustainable community indicators project, profiling city and country experiences with indicators. Federal agencies, organized by USDA, are working cooperatively with the Joint Center to better understand how community indicator efforts connect to regional and national indicator efforts.
Action 2
The Administration should develop new economic statistics to measure reinvestment. As part of this effort, HUD and the U.S. Department of Commerce should develop statistical barometers. to capture reinvestment in the renovation of commercial and residential projects and brownfields redevelopment. Presently, government statistics track the economy and economic development based almost exclusively on new commercial and residential activities (such as housing starts); this practice discourages the financial and business sector from recognizing opportunities for sustainable community reinvestment.
Recommendation 5
Research and experiment with new market mechanisms that promote sustainable community development goals.
Action 1
Through already existing pilots, public-private partnerships should evaluate how individual development accounts (IDAs) can achieve sustainable community
objectives. IDAs provide a means to build wealth for the poor and low-income by matching savings with funds from external sources such as foundations, corporations,
religious institutions, and government. Building personal assets and facilitating connections to mainstream banks
can be vital in building sustainable communities in distressed metropolitan and rural areas. Over 20 states have changed their policies to enable IDA experiments, many
of which are being coordinated by the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. A 1999 initiative of the U.S.
Treasury Department that mandates electronic funds transfer for federal distributions provides a unique opportunity to link welfare and welfare-to-work recipients with
mainstream financial institutions.
Action 2
The federal government should work with lenders to expand research on location-efficient mortgages. The location-efficient mortgage (LEM) is intended to enable
homebuyers to shift money saved on transportation costs to housing. The LEM Partnership, begun in 1996, includes the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Surface Transportation Policy Project, and Fannie Mae. It is conducting pilots in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle in which first-time homeowners can qualify for up to $35,000 more .house. for the same family income because they live near public transit.35 Analyses of urban access are also underway in Miami, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. In support of proposed White House actions on smart growth and regional collaboration, leaders from relevant sectors should help EPA, HUD, and the U.S. Departments of Energy and Transportation track, evaluate, and enhance the use of location efficiency as an incentive for smart growth and sustainable development. These agencies, along with foundations, financial institutions, and community- based organizations, should also identify ways that better information can help the marketplace value location efficiency.
Action 3
The federal government, working with state and local governments and the private sector, should provide incentives to capture the air quality benefits of compact development. A recent EPA study demonstrates that developing infill sites rather than greenfield sites on the fringe of developed areas results in lower vehicle-miles traveled because people live closer to work, schools, shopping, and other services.36 This translates into lower emissions increases. Cities and states should be able to capture these benefits where possible and apply them to requirements under the Clean Air Act. EPA, working with other federal and state agencies, should coordinate and expand existing pilot projects such as the Clean Air Brownfields Partnership Pilot and the Urban Heat Island Reduction
Initiative. Also, methodologies for capturing the benefits of urban redevelopment under the Clean Air Act should be identified and ways to replicate those methodologies
determined.
Action 4
Government, finance, business, foundation, and community- based organizations should periodically convene multisector design teams. to assess the effectiveness of market-
based strategies and pilots and identify new innovations. These teams would
(1) inventory the capability of existing market systems and instruments;
(2) exchange knowledge about potential market incentives that can meet sustainable community goals and objectives;
(3) evaluate the benefits of market incentives; and
(4) specify new market-based scenarios, mechanisms, and incentives that would advance sustainable community development in metropolitan and rural areas.
Recommendation 6
Broker strategic alliances between urban and rural markets.
Action 1
The Administration, working through the Council on Environmental Quality, should work together with leaders from the private sector, nongovernment organizations,
USDA, other federal agencies, and state and local governments to develop strategic alliances to link urban and rural markets and foster joint development opportunities. A
memorandum of understanding should be used to organize regional alliances and pilots emphasizing market research and expansion, technology development and transfer, collaborative approaches to ecosystem management, and other strategic ventures that support regions. In particular, federal and state agencies should partner with regional entrepreneurs to link urban consumers and rural producers through direct marketing channels for locally grown food. Such links would offer opportunities to protect farmland located in or near metropolitan areas while maintaining economically viable small farm production. These direct marketing opportunities can be promoted and enhanced by a variety of federal and state programs and activities, including community food security programs, community-supported agriculture, development of value-added
processing and marketing enterprises, cooperatives, procurement policies, school meal programs and other institutional food systems, and farmers. markets. Success
stories, lessons learned, and elements of success should be identified and evaluated for future replication.
Action 2
Natural resource agencies, including the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Natural Resources Conservation Service, should work together to bolster
natural resource-based opportunities as part of regional sustainable community development efforts. Greater federal interagency cooperation is needed to help communities understand and incorporate opportunities to conserve and protect natural resources and ecosystems which are often decoupled from community and economic development strategies. These efforts should encompass both rural and urban areas. Although natural resources and the land base are viewed as rural, many jobs and processes that use these resources as raw materials are located in urban areas.
Agencies should organize their collective enterprise development efforts; they should especially help expand the work of the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities with cities and counties nationwide on natural resource-based enterprise development. This work can help strengthen the linkages between rural and urban America
and reinforce the connections between the environment and economic development.
Action 3
USDA should take the lead in supporting efforts to protect farm, ranch, and forest lands through regional alliance. An alliance of organizations and agencies concerned
with protecting historically rural lands threatened by conversion to other uses is forming around ecological and productivity concerns. Agencies could support research and analyses to more holistically characterize the issue from the perspectives of protecting farm, ranch, and forest lands. Agencies and other organizations could identify needed policy and program responses including expanded incentives to conserve .working lands. In urbanizing areas as well as at the edges of metropolitan areas. In particular, agencies and other organizations should evaluate the effectiveness of .Forest Banks and
their adaptation to promote better management of other ecosystems and other natural resources. In addition, federal agencies will help sponsor and organize a national conference on Working Lands and Development in June 1999 as a follow-up to the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America. This conference will aim to provide participants with a better understanding of problems, considerations, and opportunities from the perspectives of professionals and public officials involved in land use issues or related transportation, rural development, or urban development issues that influence land
use. The federal government can help regions build more livable communities through the productive use of existing infrastructure and the conservation of critical natural
resources on farm, ranch, and forest lands.
Recommendation 7
Federal, state, and local government, working with public and private financial intermediaries, should increase access to capital for sustainable community initiatives.
Action 1
Using the power of the National Performance Review Act, the Administration should continue to consolidate and coordinate federal programs and allow flexibility to
enable states and local governments to consolidate smaller separate grant programs. Many sustainable community initiatives are spearheaded by community groups that lack
the experience, fiscal resources, and time to work within the complex administrative structure of government. Other organizations have expertise, time, and money, but
could be even more productive if their resources were targeted elsewhere. Although federal, state, and local governments have taken action to reduce obstacles, continuous
attention should be given to encouraging flexibility for funding eligibility and .one-stop shopping. for grants and other funding opportunities.
Action 2
The Administration should create a commission comprising banks, governments, and community development corporations to evaluate how recent restructurings of
financial institutions can provide opportunities for sustainable community development. Corporate and legal restructurings incur a variety of public obligations. Each new merger in the banking and financial services industry, particularly on the scale evidenced in the past two years (such as the recent Citicorp-Travelers Insurance merger to create a $700 billion institution), creates new kinds of reinvestment obligations under the Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA). As regulatory practices move from command-and-control to more flexible performance-based systems, increased public disclosure requirements
increase the opportunities for public intervention and negotiation to guarantee that CRA obligations will produce tangible community and consumer benefits. The proposed commission may also evaluate if it is necessary to increase CRA obligations, applying these obligations to all financial institutions, and expanding the federal pool of funds (currently about $350 million) for seeding new community development financial institutions. Despite the incentives provided by CRA, poor communities still lack banks or other institutions in which to place their savings, and the poor, in general, remain unable to access affordable credit. This significantly affects progress towards sustainability in inner city and rural communities.
Action 3
Working with financial institutions and rural community development corporations, USDA should develop strategies that address rural credit concerns. The range of financial
institutions involved in rural communities is often small. Some sectors of rural America are well served, such as large farms and housing. Less well served are sustainable
agriculture; small farmers, ranchers, and woodlot owners; small municipalities interested in rural development projects; and entrepreneurs interested in new innovative businesses (such as information and knowledge based industries and services); these are precisely the types of entities that could serve as the foundation of rural sustainable
communities.
Action 4
The Administration should strengthen and support community- owned banks. In pursuit of this goal, it should support full funding of the U.S. Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions program. Local ownership is an important way for a community to inoculate its banks against unwanted shutdowns, mergers, or departures and ensure a high level of community reinvestment of savings. The argument for local ownership applies with even greater force to nondepository financial institutions which
have no CRA obligations for community reinvestment. Leaders from all sectors, the Administration, community development corporations, and foundations should highlight
the efforts of various kinds of local depository institutions, commercial banks like South Shore, thrifts like the Union Savings Bank of Albuquerque, and community development credit unions like Raleigh-Durham Self-Help . that are helping low-income members and small businesses finance myriad sustainability initiatives.
Action 5
The appropriate federal agencies, in collaboration with the private sector, should actively promote initiatives aimed at creating a secondary market for financing sustainable
community development. HUD, for example, has launched a pilot for creating such a secondary market and has developed a budget proposal to take the concept to a
larger scale. The Minneapolis, Minnesota, nonprofit Community Reinvestment Fund, which serves 15 states, operates a secondary market for development loans. The
Fund purchases loans, at market values, from the revolving loan funds of local nonprofits and municipal economic development and affordable housing programs. The Fund then sells bonds, backed by pools of these development loans, to investors. This secondary market enables local organizations to raise cash to fund projects, and it helps them become less reliant on foundations and government to fund their ongoing development lending programs.
Action 6
Federal, state, and local governments should strengthen relationships with the philanthropic sector to leverage their respective funds as a source of capital for sustainable community development. There are more than 400 U.S. foundations with combined total assets of $10 billion. These foundations play a critical role in supporting development for the general community well-being. The public sector should work with foundations on place-based community development initiatives to better leverage public
and private funds.
Recommendation 8
Promote shift in tax policies and subsidy reform.
Action 1
The Administration should assess the impacts of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 on land use and development patterns and community reinvestment. There are two facets to this assessment. First, this tax law virtually repeals the capital gains tax on the sale of personal homes. The Environmental Law Institute estimates that the law could affect nearly $4 million in sales of existing homes each year.39 At the same time, the 1997 act creates new opportunities for urban revitalization by making housing rehabilitation by owner-occupants an opportunity to generate tax-free income. It is unclear, however, whether this rehabilitation will occur in urban areas in need of revitalization. Second, the law includes the first new tax incentive for land conservation in over a decade which makes certain land in or near a metropolitan area, national park, wilderness area, or urban national forest eligible for favorable estate tax treatment through the donation of a qualified perpetual conservation easement. USDA, working with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other appropriate agencies, should identify how the conservation incentive provisions should work.
Recommendation 9
Promote holistic economic development planning.
Action 1
The Economic Development Administration should take the lead in developing and delivering educational forums for state, local, and tribal economic development planners
on how economic planning and sustainability community goals can be aligned and on how to attract and promote sustainable business development. Already, Economic
Development Administration (EDA) planning supports 320 economic development districts and 65 Indian tribes, staffed and operated locally, to help communities build
capacity to focus on long-term economic challenges. Since economic development districts are often coordinating entities for various federal programs, the agency also supports and encourages interdisciplinary regional planning that encompasses economic, social, and environmental factors. Current EDA efforts should continue to meet the
need for increased sustainable business development.
Action 2
Elected, community, and business leaders; labor representatives; and local government agencies should work together with residents to develop a consensus about what
types of business investment would succeed in their community and which are desired, and communicate this consensus to brokers, trade associations, and potential investors. Community groups should also create, where possible, a partnership that can represent community interests to new and existing businesses considering an investment in the community. National community development organizations, industry associations, and economic development agencies should work together to identify and promote industry-specific strategies that increase community investment and promote sustainability. In particular, building on experience from the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, these groups should look at how to promote new economic opportunities for sustainable small businesses in low-income communities.
Recommendation 10
Promote business and industry investment and involvement in sustainable community development.
Action 1
The Administration, working with leaders from financial institutions, business, and community-based organizations, should convene a series of national forums to engage the financial community and private sector in sustainable community revitalization. These forums would identify opportunities for the private sector to engage and invest in sustainable community alternatives.40 They would open a dialogue to obtain high-level commitments from private sector leaders to partner with government, nongovernmental,
and community development organizations on sustainable community initiatives and to help remove barriers and obstacles to sustainable community revitalization in metropolitan and rural areas.
Action 2
Key stakeholders should continue to modify existing programs and jointly develop and implement new policies to make infill properties desirable to investors and better able
to compete with greenfields. Developing infill property is often more costly and complicated than developing greenfields. Federal and state policies have been enacted that attempt to level the playing field between urban and exurban locations, but federal, state, and local governments should continue to review existing policies and develop
new ones to provide the same level and quality of investment and services to the inner city and older suburbs as are provided to exurban locations. For example, the federal
government should continue to review existing policies and develop new ones to fully implement brownfields legislation and its National Brownfields Partnership. States should investigate whether they can replicate the growth management initiatives of the city of Portland, Oregon, and the states of Maryland, Florida, and New Jersey.41 City
governments should also work with business associations to reduce or eliminate regulations that impose costly and unreasonable barriers to business development in distressed communities.
Action 3
Federal, state, and local governments and community nonprofits should develop networks to match green businesses with the needs of municipalities, communities, and each other. This initiative could be particularly relevant for facilitating outsourcing in ways that strengthen local economies and help fledgling green businesses find green suppliers and potential customers. For example, the Triangle J Council of Governments Industrial Ecosystem Development Project . a partnership between EPA, the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance, regional development agencies, and local universities . is surveying companies in the Raleigh-Durham region to identify ways to turn the waste of one company into a raw material for another company. The Interagency Working Group on Environmental Technology is developing a database with Public Technology, Inc., to match the specific needs of state and local municipalities to appropriate environmental technology providers. Citizens in Appalachia are electronically tying their communities into the new world economy through the Appalachian Community Economic Network. With the Network's help, more than 20 entrepreneurs have found customers through the Public WebMarket, a project tapping the resources of the World Wide Web and orchestrated by the Center for Civic Networking.
Action 4
Federal and state governments, community development corporations, and nonprofits should determine how existing programs for small businesses and microenterprises can be tailored for green and sustainable start-ups. Microbusinesses in the United States comprise an .invisible economy. that goes largely unnoticed in economic development debates. Recent research, however, reveals that microbusinesses with four or fewer employees generated 43 percent of the net new jobs created from 1990 to 1994. Multiple stakeholders should promote new economic opportunities for small businesses in low-income communities and address the difficulty of financing small commercial loans in rich and poor communities alike. Research to determine best practices, successful strategies, and the profitability of existing and potential sustainable investments in metropolitan and rural communities should be disseminated through trade associations, business groups, business schools, financing sectors, and the electronic and print media.
Recommendation 11
Promote sustainable strategies to workforce development.
Action 1
Federal, state, and local agencies; the private sector; and community organizations engaged in workforce development and welfare-to-work should integrate their programs
so that those most in need of help can access a seamless system of support services. The box on .Sustainable Approaches to Workforce Development. (following) lists ideas for thinking about the requisite systems, people, and commitments to accomplish this objective.
Action 2
The U.S. Department of Transportation, in cooperation with other federal agencies, should continue aggressive implementation of the Job Access and Reverse Commute
Grant program to address gaps in the transportation system that hamper welfare recipients and other low-income people from getting to jobs and other support services. Transportation has been identified as a key element of job placement and retention. Those who seek work cannot work if they can't get to work.43 At the local level, agencies, nonprofits, community organizations, and other public and private sector entities should coordinate efforts to ensure that employment transportation needs are identified, prioritized, and integrated with the existing transportation system. Employers should take a lead role in identifying and meeting the transportation needs of their workforce, both by directly providing services and working with other employers and transportation providers to ensure effective and timely access.
Action 3
HUD should be able to provide funding to managers of affordable housing projects to enable them to implement and provide services to help residents of HUD-assisted housing developments find and retain jobs. These funds will enable HUD to complement the efforts of the U.S. Department of Labor and its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. The funds will also expand the agency's current efforts to link residents of poor neighborhoods with support services and jobs outside of their
neighborhoods.
Action 4
Local elected, community, and business leaders; labor representatives; and local government agencies should establish strong linkages between economic planning/development activities and education and training systems. Business development and recruitment efforts frequently are not firmly linked with education and job training programs. All too often, this means that even though businesses decide to locate in a particular community, the residents of that community who have the greatest need for jobs do not have the skills to acquire and/or retain jobs in these businesses. Firmer linkages will establish feedback mechanisms whereby education and training programs can better prepare participants for future jobs that are expected to be located in an area.
Recommendation 12
Develop initiatives to support and strengthen multicultural relationships in the context of sustainable development.
Action 1
Leaders from all sectors should work with the Administration to identify how national initiatives on sustainable development can complement national and regional initiatives on building multicultural relationships. The Administration should, for example, continue to promote dialogue on cultural ethics and values through initiatives such as One America. The One America initiative has identified promising practices for racial reconciliation across the country in several areas: the arts, business, community and
economic development, community building, education, government, health, religion, and youth. Leaders from all sectors and the Administration should determine which of
these practices also address economic prosperity, ecological, and social equity objectives so that best practices for building multicultural relationships in the context of building
sustainable communities can be identified. Based on this review, the Administration, working in partnership with federal agencies; businesses; state, local and tribal governments; and community-based organizations should convene a series of regional meetings addressing how sustainable community initiatives can leverage community racial, cultural, and religious diversity as important assets. The workshops should specifically address collaborative, inclusive participation of diverse racial, cultural, and
religious groups and communities in regional initiatives.
Action 2
Foundations, the private sector, and community-based groups . working with federal, state, local, and tribal offices addressing environmental justice, community revitalization,
and health and human services . should develop a series of workshops on how sustainability initiatives can provide opportunities for poor and minority individuals,
persons with disabilities, and communities. Discussions on race, class, and the environment have traditionally focused on redressing inequities in disparate impacts of environmental problems on low-income or minority groups. Sustainable development can both deepen and broaden the context of environmental equity by identifying how low-income or minority groups can build on their economic, ecological, and social assets to
strengthen and revitalize communities. A series of workshops should be convened that identify investment opportunities in sustainable community development that can directly benefit minority and low-income communities. The workshops should address how
policies and procedures can better recognize and build on indigenous knowledge; they should also provide best practices as well as investment and policy guidance for public
and private sector agencies. Special attention should be dedicated to involving poor and low-income people in the design and implementation of these workshops.
Recommendation 13
Build local capacity for sustainable community development.
Federal agencies, local government, the private sector, community groups, and foundations should develop and support a series of working sessions to build local capacity for sustainable community development. These working sessions would bring together community leaders and key agencies to build local capacity for decision making and collaboration by
(1) ensuring access to good information,
(2) providing a range of technical assistance,
(3) helping communities acquire analytical tools, and
(4) training local individuals and organizations on best practices.
Such working sessions could also provide a mechanism for regional collaboration. As originally proposed by the National Academy of Public Administration, such workshops could lay the foundations for a permanent forum between regions and the many different federal agencies that have an interest in regional problem-solving. Working sessions could be tied to existing outreach programs at universities or newly created, like HUD's Community Builders Fellows program; these could be sponsored by regional, statewide, or community foundations.
Action 2
The Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators, working with human service providers and community-based indicator projects, should develop indicators that can better measure social capital and local capacity. There are several measures of social capital. One is the type and frequency of interactions within and outside the community. Examples are inventories of civic associations that provide information on members including numbers and characteristics such as age, gender, race, and disabilities. Such inventories can show frequency of meetings, decision-making processes, finances, and services provided to members and nonmembers. Another measurement is the impact of various types of social capital on the ability to reach sustainable development goals. This effort should, at a minimum, examine each of these measures of social capital.
Recommendation 14
Encourage regional and multijurisdictional partnerships.
Action 1
The federal government should provide incentives for collaboration and use more flexible and regional approaches to align its information and its investments. These incentives could include financing for metropolitan collaborative pilot projects, as well as promoting innovative strategies for regional land use planning. The federal government should work with localities to determine how best to coordinate its vast array of information, technical assistance, and funding to meet local and regional goals.
HUD, in conjunction with other federal agencies, should be given the authority and resources to provide new flexible funding to multi-jurisdictional, multi-sectoral partnerships to use in designing and implementing regional approaches to community, economic, and affordable housing development. Funding would be provided to cooperative partnerships of government, business, community, and institutional representatives from multiple jurisdictions within a region that can and have agreed to take quick action in adopting regional approaches. The funding should
(1) overcome the hesitancy of localities to sacrifice their limited, piecemeal resources to inter-jurisdictional work;
(2) enable cities and counties to respond to their sustainable development needs in the manner they see best;
(3) enable regional partnerships to secure the capacity with staff, technology, technical assistance, and more needed to accelerate concrete collaborations;
(4) partially cover the costs of implementing regional initiatives; and
(5) create lessons that can be shared with other regions facing similar challenges, such as in providing affordable housing. This initiative would make a solid statement to the nation that the federal government views bottom-up, cooperative, inter-jurisdictional, and inter-sectoral partnerships as a critical tool for addressing existing development and embracing the sustainable development opportunities of the next millennium.
Action 3
States, regional councils, and local governments should incorporate sustainability mission and goals into regional planning guidelines, such as on smart growth and ecosystem management. Local governments, individually and regionally, operate within the legislative and administrative frameworks set by their state governments. State governments can help shape the course of their regions by embracing sustainability approaches and ways of thinking.
Action 4
State, local government, and regional organizations should support the use of indicators to show interdependence of jurisdictions within regions. The National Association of Regional Councils, for example, is currently developing a State of the Regions Report to help benchmark the performance of regions on a number of economic, environmental, and social factors. In metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Portland, Seattle, and Chattanooga, local civic, business, and community groups have compiled indicators that show the interrelationships of regional concerns and the effectiveness of regional cooperation.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 1
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN STRATEGIC PLANNING
Create a community-driven, strategic planning process that brings people together to identify , key issues, develop a vision, set goals and benchmarks, and determine actions to improve their community.
ACTION 1. All levels of government and the private sector should build multisector decision-making capacity at the local level. They can do so by providing information and financial and technical assistance to communities that wish to engage in a collaborative, communitywide process to integrate economic prosperity, environmental health, and opportunity in their decisions and actions.
ACTION 2. All levels of government should ensure substantial opportunity for public participation in all phases of planning and decision-making to allow those affected to have a voice in the outcome. Specific steps include creating and expanding methods for public participation in legislation, ordinances, and community advisory boards. Special steps should be taken to ensure that historically underrepresented groups are involved.
ACTION 3. All levels of government, especially local government, should identify barriers to greater citizen involvement in decision-making -- such as lack of child care or transportation -- and develop strategies to overcome them. Employers should give employees flexibility and incentives to increase the time they and their families can devote to community activities.
ACTION 4. Community-based coalitions can create educational media campaigns to encourage citizen participation in government, disseminate high-quality information on community issues, and promote public discussions that identify solutions to problems. Coalitions should be as broad as possible, including industry and business, schools, newspapers, television and radio stations, community groups, environmental organizations, labor, and local government.
ACTION 5. Federal and state agencies should help local communities that wish to use profiles of potential environmental risks as a tool to identify and set priorities for solving environmental problems. The agencies should provide information on and facilitate access to communities that have successfully used this tool.
ACTION 6. Community-based coalitions can work together to draft an economic development strategy to fill basic needs and take advantage of new trends as part of the strategic planning process. Coalitions should include businesses, employees, unions, chambers of commerce, environmental organizations. local government, and residents.
ACTION 7. Community-based coalitions can develop and carry out programs to increase voter registration and participation, working with national voter registration projects where possible.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 2
COLLABORATIVE REGIONAL PLANNING
Encourage communities in a region to work together to deal with issues that transcend jurisdictional and other boundaries.
ACTION 1. States, counties, and communities should cooperate to create a system of regional accounts that measures the costs and benefits of local land use, development, and economic trends on a region's economy, environment, distribution of benefits, and quality of life. States and regions can consider the use of collaborative benchmarking, such as those used in Oregon and Minnesota, to look at a broad range of social, environmental, and economic measures. The federal government should work with state and local governments to ensure that federal statistical resources are available and used appropriately to support state and local governments in measuring benefits and costs.
ACTION 2. Federal and state governments should encourage cooperation among communities by providing incentives for regional collaboration on issues, such as transportation, affordable housing, economic development, air and water quality, and land use, that transcend political jurisdictions.
In encouraging such cooperation, they should look to the example of the federal Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Program, which required communities to draft funding proposals using a collaborative strategic planning process.[2] This kind of cooperation should be encouraged among communities within a region to advance common objectives. Federal and state agencies responsible for environmental protection, economic development, land use, and transportation policies should work with one or more geographic areas to establish planning and development activities. These agencies should create incentives to encourage regional planning and development, such as waivers of state matches for transportation planning funds and more favorable federal and state tax treatment for site cleanup costs.
ACTION 3. Local and county governments can pool resources from local property taxes to increase equity in public services, improve the quality of education, break the exacerbating regional mismatch between social needs and tax resources, reduce local fiscal incentives for sprawl, and end competition for the tax base within a metropolitan area. Local and county actions to accomplish this should receive federal and state incentives.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 3
BUILDING DESIGN AND REHABILITATION
Design and rehabilitate buildings to use energy and natural resources efficiently, enhance public health and the environment, preserve historic and natural settings, and contribute to a sense of community identity.
ACTION 1. Federal, state, and local governments should work with builders, architects, developers, contractors, materials producers, manufacturers, community groups, and others to develop and enhance design tools that can be used to improve the efficiency and livability of buildings. These include models for building codes; zoning ordinances; and permit approval processes for residential and commercial buildings, public infrastructure, and landscapes. Model building codes should consider energy efficiency; durability; use of nontoxic materials; indoor air quality; use of recycled and recyclable materials; use of native plants that can reduce the need for fertilizers, pesticides, and water for landscaping; and use of designs that promote human interaction.
ACTION 2. These groups should disseminate these design tools, making the information easily accessible to local decision makers in interested communities which can use the model codes as a starting point, adapting them to reflect local conditions and values.
ACTION 3. Groups in communities that have made historic preservation a priority can inventory and prioritize historic properties and identify financing to rehabilitate these buildings. Local governments can enact ordinances to preserve historic buildings and remove incentives that encourage demolishing them. They can create incentives for rehabilitating and adapting historic buildings for new uses, where appropriate.
COMMUNITY DESIGN
Design new communities and improve existing ones to use land efficiently, promote mixed-use and mixed-income development, retain public open space, and provide diverse transportation options.
ACTION 1. Local jurisdiction should structure or revise local zoning regulations and permit approved processes to encourage development located along transit corridors, near a range of transit alternatives, and in rehabilitated brownfield sites, where appropriate. Where there is demand for it, zoning should allow mixed-use development siting including residences, businesses, recreational facilities, and households with a variety of incomes within close proximity.
ACTION 2. Federal and state governments and the private sector should offer the assistance of multidisciplinary design teams to local jurisdictions that want help with sustainable community design. These design teams should include leading experts in a broad range of fields, including architecture, transportation, land use, energy efficiency, development, and engineering. Design teams should work with state and local governments and community residents with related experience to design, develop, and make accessible to communities alternatives to sprawl development, models for regional cooperation, and sustainable building practices.
ACTION 3. The federal government should work with lenders to expand research on location-efficient mortgages. Such a mortgage would increase the borrowing power of potential homebuyers in high-density locations with easy access to mass transportation. A borrower would quality for a larger loan based on expected higher disposable income from a reduction in or absence of automobile payments, insurance, and maintenance.
ACTION 4. Federal and state governments -- in consultation with local government, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations -- should support local planning that integrates economic development, land use, and social equity concerns and engages significant public participation through existing planning grants. These principles, which were integrated in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, should be reaffirmed during the act's reauthorization and expanded as requirements for federal and state funding and tax incentives for economic development, housing, transportation, and environmental programs.[6]
ACTION 6. The federal government should give communities credit toward attainment of national ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act when they use community design to lower traffic by adopting zoning codes, building codes, and other changes that encourage more efficient land use patterns to reduce pollution from motor vehicles and energy use.
ACTION 7. All levels of government should work with community groups and the private sector to ensure that no segment of society bears a disproportionate share of environmental risks in a community. Collaborative partnerships could periodically conduct evaluations to ensure that desirable transportation and infrastructure investments -- such as those in roads, buildings, and water projects -- do not disproportionately deliver greater benefits to wealthier, more politically active communities and disproportionately fewer benefits to poorer, less politically active communities or communities of color.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 5
COMMUNITY GROWTH MANAGEMENT
Manage the geographical growth of existing communities and siting of new ones to decrease sprawl, conserve open space, respect nature's carrying capacity, and provide protection from natural hazards.
ACTION 1. States and communities should evaluate the costs of infrastructure in greenfield or relatively undeveloped areas to examine subsidies and correct market incentives in the financing of capital costs of infrastructure, such as sewers and utilities, for development of land bordering metropolitan areas.
ACTION 2. All levels of government and nongovernmental organizations can conserve open space through acquisition of land and/or development rights. For example, public water departments can budget to acquire land necessary to protect public water supplies. Private land trusts can expand their acquisition of wetlands or other valuable open space.
ACTION 3. Local governments and counties can create community partnerships to develop regional open space networks and urban growth boundaries as part of a regional framework to discourage sprawl development that threatens a region's environmental carrying capacity.
ACTION 4. Local governments and counties can work together to use community impact analyses and other information on the environmental carrying capacity of a region as the foundation for land use planning and development decisions.
ACTION 5. All levels of government should identify and eliminate governmental incentives, such as subsidized floodplain insurance and subsidized utilities, that encourage development in areas vulnerable to natural hazards.
ACTION 6. The federal government should redirect federal policies that encourage low-density sprawl to foster investment in existing communities. It should encourage shifts in transportation spending toward transit, highway maintenance and repair, and expansion of transit options rather than new highway or beltway construction.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 6
CREATION OF STRONG, DIVERSIFIED LOCAL ECONOMIES
Apply economic development strategies that create diversified local economies built on unique local advantages to tap expanding markets and technological innovation.
ACTION 1. As part of a broader community-driven strategic plan, a community can conduct an inventory and assessment of its economic, natural, and human resources to identify its unique comparative advantages and strategic niche in the larger regional economy.
ACTION 2. State and federal governments should promote labor force development when they fund physical infrastructure projects for transportation, public housing, and sewer and water systems within a community by hiring locally and providing skills training for workers.
ACTION 3. Federal, state, and local governments should assist low-income workers through programs to improve access to education and training and tax and development strategies targeted at the creation of jobs in new markets integrating economic and environmental goals.
ACTION 4. Federal and state governments should review and where appropriate, strengthen labor standards by ensuring an adequate minimum wage and proper health and safety standards and by encouraging greater flexibility in work hours to allow more time for community participation and/or parenting.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 7
TRAINING AND LIFELONG LEARNING
Expand and coordinate public and private training programs to enable all people to improve their skills to match future job requirements in communities on a continuing basis.
ACTION 1. Businesses, unions, schools, students, and local government within a community should develop and integrate training programs to ensure that workers -- especially those who need it most -- have the necessary skills to take advantage of current and future economic development opportunities. They should work together to integrate current programs and acquire funding from the private sector, schools, and government to fill identified gaps. Training programs that should be integrated and potentially expanded include school-to-work arrangements, apprenticeships, community service, summer employment, and job corps opportunities.
ACTION 2. Federal and state governments should help those who want to pursue further education and lifelong learning by providing individuals with tax deductions for tuition, assistance with financing, or other incentives.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 8
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Capitalize upon economic development opportunities from businesses and industries that target environmental technologies, recycling, and pollution prevention to create jobs.
ACTION 1. Federal and state agencies should work with the private sector to create a one-stop shop for financial and technical assistance to small businesses that would identify cost-effective investments in resource efficiency and financing and help make pollution prevention standard practice. The federal government should work with lenders to develop ways to validate the outcomes of investments in resource efficiency to address their concerns and so improve access to capital.
ACTION 2. Federal and state agencies should assist communities that want to create eco-industrial parks that cluster businesses in the same area to create new models of industrial efficiency, cooperation, and environmental responsibility. Assistance should include making relevant information available, allowing flexibility in permitting and other regulator areas while ensuring that environmental goals are met or exceeded, and enacting mixed-use zoning that allows for eco-industrial parks that have low or no emissions.
ACTION 3. Local communities can adopt programs to reuse materials and collect and recycle secondary materials diverted from what some call the urban mine - the municipal solid waste stream. Such programs minimize wastes, prevent pollution, provide opportunities for new businesses and industries such as recycling-related manufacturing, generate jobs and revenue from recycling collection and processing, create high-skill industrial jobs and sizeable sales revenues from manufacture of recycled products, and conserve landfill space. The federal government should work with state and local governments to establish related guidelines and model programs and create incentives to promote secondary materials use and recycling-related manufacturing.
ACTION 4. The public, private, and nonprofit sectors should work together to identify innovative opportunities to target some of the economic benefits from more efficient use of resources and greater regulatory flexibility in terms of creating jobs, opportunity, and social equity in communities.
POLICY RECOMMENDATION 9
REDEVELOPMENT OF BROWNFIELD SITES
Revitalize brownflelds -- which are contaminated, abandoned, or underused land -- by making them more attractive for redevelopment by providing regulatory flexibility, reducing process barriers, and assessing greenfleld development to reflect necessary infrastructure costs.
ACTION 1. All levels of government should work in partnership with community residents, environmental organizations, community development corporations, industry, and businesses to redevelop or stabilize brownfield sites by eliminating barriers and creating incentives for environmental cleanup and by reorienting existing state and federal economic development funding and programs to include these sites.
ACTION 2. Federal and state agencies should encourage investment in brownfield redevelopment by using the polluter pays principle, assuring prospective purchasers and lenders that they will not be held liable for cleanup in cases in which they did not contribute to contamination.
ACTION 3. The federal government should work with states, counties, and communities to develop tools that compare, on a site-specific basis, the local economic and environmental costs of developing a greenfield versus redeveloping a brownfield site.