Go Green or Go Home... If you can afford it

After our class discussion yesterday I began to wonder about how the current economic situation in North America would affect the sustainability movement. We learned in class that community planning for the short term, quick pay-back building practices actually end up yielding less profit overall and do not help the community build in a sustainable fashion. This is the case for numerous cities that are suffering from urban sprawl and dependence on the automobile. However in the tough economic times we are in today where thousands of people are losing their jobs across the continent, it seems to me that the higher cost, sustainable building practices would be even less appealing to developers who are trying to cut project costs in any way possible.

When I first started thinking about how this economic situation may set the sustainability movement back, I couldn’t help but realize that it was these thought processes that got us in the situation we are in today. Through short term planning and trying to cut production costs communities have become single use neighborhoods that less and less people are able to afford. It has been shown that once people can no longer afford these single family homes that the community rapidly deteriorates, sometimes to the point where the community is seen as unsafe. What once was a hot new fancy place to live is now a hotspot for crime and drugs (on a per capita scale).

As was discussed in class, I believe that this economic situation could be a good thing for the sustainability movement for the fact that the market will force a change in the way we do things. It is becoming evident that fewer people can afford the massive single-family homes in the suburbs and commute to work every day, and that more long-term planning will be absolutely crucial for communities to survive. One initiative that the Canadian Government is undertaking to promote sustainability is the Federal Gas Tax. This fund could provide developers huge opportunities to gain funding if they choose to invest in sustainable practices.

I now believe that the sustainability movement has reached a point where it is big enough that the difficult financial situation will actually help the movement. There is so much information available today on how to build in a more sustainable matter and it has been proven that these communities return higher profits to investors in the long range that developers will have to make a change in order to sustain both themselves and the communities they build.

Go Green!