Sustainable communities and the new patchwork politics of place

Abstract

The pairing of community and sustainable development has dominated the international policy agenda for at least three decades with its assertion that the imperatives of capital accumulation can be balanced for the needs of social reproduction (Raco 2005). As a framework of state strategy, the concept of sustainable communities has come to define a particular mode of governance in which the responsibi ity for ameliorating the impact of unfettered growth is devolved to place-based voluntary and community associations (Mayer 2000). The community provides a model of sustainability in which the economics of collective consumption and the politics of community action can be engaged in the planning and stewardship of local development. The strategies of sustainable communities that result combine the market zeal of spatial liberalism with themes of redistributive justice and equality, finding in the concept of community both a model of resilience and self-reliance and conversely a dynamic of mutual aid and co-operation.