Eco-Municipalities Step Forward Naturally
- a power plant fueled entirely by a city's own solid waste.
- only bicycles and pedestrians allowed in the city's downtown center.
- an eco-industrial park built to minimize energy consumption.
That's just some of what makes Umea, Sweden (population 110,000) an eco-municipality, planner Sarah James pointed out during the annual meeting of the Vermont Planners Association.
James, the co-author with Torbjorn Lahti of The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices, has focused much of her consulting work on helping municipalities develop approaches to reducing local energy needs and become more environmentally-conscious.
Screenshot from the Umea Energi web site of their Dava power plant.
Eco-municipalities seek to weave long-term sustainability into the fabric of their community. It's an idea that's taken hold in Sweden (click on the British flag icon for English), but is starting to catch on in the U.S.
At the Upper Midwest Planning Conference last November, Anna Haines, Director of the Center for Land Use Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, described how twelve Wisconsin municipalities in the rural Chequamegon Bay area have moved towards becoming eco-municipalities.
Local residents have taken the lead in advocating for their city or town to adopt a resolution designating itself as an "eco-municipality." The process usually starts with interested individuals meeting in weekly "study circles" to educate
themselves about what it might mean to become a more environmentally-oriented city or town. Haines pointed to the value of these informal study circles. As she put it, "they help get people ready to move into a planning process." It's a very "bottom-up" approach to local planning.
For more on eco-municipalities:
- Resource links on the Sustainable Dane web site (Dane County, Wisconsin).
- Listen to Betsy Rosenberg's brief interview of Mayor Larry MacDonald of the small city of Bayfield, Wisconsin.
- See the City of Ashland, Wisconsin, eco-municipality resolution; pdf file.
- Notes from a tour of Umea, Sweden, focusing on its ecological practices; pdf file.
Portsmouth, New Hamsphire, is also using the eco-municipality designation as a way of focusing on sustainability. From the SeacoastNRG.org web site (Dec. 28, 2007).
The interest in eco-municipalities is part of what's emerging as a much broader movement towards more sustainable development practices.
It can also be seen in things like the booming interest in green building (see my post, Jamming in the Green) and in the adoption by mainstream organizations like the American Planning Association and American Institute of Architects of sustainability principles.
The APA's Policy Guide, for example, includes the following key objectives:
- Reduce dependence upon fossil fuels, extracted underground metals and minerals.
- Reduce dependence on chemicals and other manufactured substances that can accumulate in Nature.
- Reduce dependence on activities that harm life-sustaining ecosystems.
- Meet the hierarchy of present and future human needs fairly and efficiently.
Along similar lines, the AIA's Sustainable Architectural Practice Position Statement (pdf file) calls for the organization to act to, among other things: "Promote sustainable design including resource conservation to achieve a minimum 50 percent reduction from the current level of consumption of fossil fuels used to construct and operate new and renovated buildings by the year 2010 ... and develop standards for the architectural profession that incorporate greater sustainability into design, education, management, and licensure standards ..."
Note from PCJ Editor Wayne Senville: for more on sustainable development, see excerpts from an article Sarah James wrote for the Planning Commissioners Journal, Moving Towards Sustainability in Planning and Zoning (also use the link to order & download the full article).
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