Sustainable Urban Community Development Guidelines

Abstract

A community includes a large number of individuals sharing an area, common characteristics, traditions, lifestyles, and daily needs. Member of a community directly influences their surrounding environment. Therefore, negative actions on the part of community members directly impact the surrounding environment leading to undesirable conditions like the accumulation of wastes and the consequent rise of diseases and pollution. There is a need to introduce the concept of sustainable communities, which focuses on water, air quality, wastes, energy, and materials. As natural resources are being consumed inequitably, some members are losing access to these resources. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, which is an unhealthy phenomenon. The proposed sustainable urban community guidelines are based on zero waste/pollution according to cradle-to-cradle concept. The guidelines are hypothetically identified as a measuring tool and focus on four categories based on scarcity of resources as well as severity of environmental impacts. These categories are known as energy, water, habitat, and infrastructure management as well as facility management. In addition to proposing guidelines for owners in either residential or commercial buildings within the community, they ensure that everyone within the community is aware of the main objectives of the sustainable community. These guidelines should encourage the investors and owners to act sustainably.