About the Center

The Center for Sustainable Community Design focuses on community design and planning that ensures environmental protection while achieving economic development and social justice.

Sustainable community design is a dynamic process in which communities anticipate and accommodate the needs of future generations. The goal is to ensure the ability to reproduce and balance ecological, social and economic systems, and link local actions to global concerns.

We focus on seeking solutions that anticipate and accommodate the needs of current and future generations in ways that balance the core values of sustainable community design:

• Ecological protection. Acknowledgment that natural systems offer critical life support functions to human communities and pose ecological limits to development;
• Economic development. Recognition that development is the engine for capital infusion, community vitality, and positive change;
• Social equity. Acknowledgment that development should improve the conditions of disadvantaged populations including basic levels of health and human dignity;
• Public engagement. Recognition that public engagement should empower and give a voice to all interest groups affected by community development and design decisions.