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leslie milam

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How important is community in the development of sustainability?

Sustainability consist of three main components: social, economical, and ecological. It has come to my attention that the social component is one of the most influential and important orientations to the development of community within an urban setting. If people worked in a communal sense in stead of individual, our communities would intertwine more often which would create sustain ability! I would like to know what you think about this!
Thank you.

Topics: Community Development Community building Youth Development global sustainability social behavior
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    Sridhar Chitturu

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    Apr 7 2012: 'Sustainability' is essentially a macroscopic term. By nature, life at individual level tries its best to sustain itself. The difficulty arises when the sustainability is a holistic application. Especially in the Democratic and Capitalistic scenarios (not that I am proposing any other means of governance) it is but natural that individuals evolve into a variety of preferences and worse, habits. To converge all of this without hurting the best of this system is a true 'Governance' challenge. Perhaps, we need not only experts (yes, academically too) but also people of holistic thought to think and run our governments. Then how are we going to ensure that through our electoral process which seems to be the only means to form a governance?

    While individual contributions towards Sustainability are appreciable, they only increase randomness factor. Of course, we need to start somewhere......why not showing our intentions......however tiny they are...
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    Bruno Delepierre 500+

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    TED AttendeeTEDx Organizer
    Apr 7 2012: People can always choose themselves for sustainable ways of living without the need of a community, however, these are exceptions. A community facilitates behavior that induces sustainability as a it provides support for the individual (a sense of belonging) and at the same time it creates a form of 'peer pressure'. Also, the community has a self-interest to create sustainable behavior as on the long term they will thrive from it.

    The world is becoming smaller because of virtual communities but the danger is that we forget an important aspect. A good TED talk about this matter can be found at http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html. I believe it is essential that real-life communities are created, physical meeting places, events etc. which can largely be facilitated by technology of course. However, shaking hands with other people holds a value that no virtual community can replace today.
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    Thomas Teuwen

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    Apr 7 2012: Community is critical to developing sustainability. But the nature of community is rapidly changing and most of us have traded our traditional community in our vicinity for a virtual community of carefully selected individuals that we tend to agree with. More and more our virtual community is structured to parrot our world view and is devoid of the mosaic of perspectives that used to come with any real neighborhood community. This disconnect plays a major role in our inability to manifest constructive change towards sustainability in our lifestyles.
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    Sean Sorrell

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    Apr 3 2012: Flaw #1:If people worked in a communal sense in stead of individual, our communities would intertwine more often which would create sustain ability!

    The best interests of the individual do not exclude the interests of the community at large. A community comprised of individuals that have their best interests at heart has been shown to create a highly evolved and productive community. The typically rare abusive individual occurs within both the communal and the individual focused communities. The abuser is ultimately removed from both groups.
    Fact #1: Shared misery is the common denominator in one group. Explosive innovation and system wide improvement is a common denominator in one group.
    Which is which? Why?
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    Jaime Lubin 10+

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    Apr 2 2012: leslie you miss the fourth component: Technology...(any kind of it).
    Community is a different context than social....
    and of course the work...to obtain sustainability you don't have to work...just do what you want, need, love to do.
    Labour is preferred to work.

    The sustainability itself begun to seems to weak to be a goal. Its impossible to achieve it.

  • Juan Filardo

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    Apr 1 2012: I think sustainability would be possible only if the community helps. It would be really hard if not, because the community has to make the change to reach sustainability (obviously, you have to think in the economical and political side too). And sadly I think that not all the communities are able to be sustainable.
    I don't believe my country (argentina) is ready to reach sustainability... e.g., if in a community people throws litter everywhere, sustainability would be a hard thing to get. In fact it is. But everyone has to keep trying
    Well, that's all I got so far...
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