Sean Connelly

Bridging sustainability and the social economy: Achieving community transformation through local food initiatives

Sustainability and the social economy are two approaches that provide critiques of mainstream economic growth based on the failure to integrate environmental and social concerns. This article explores the potential for community transformation by bridging these two approaches — bringing more environmental considerations into the social economy and using the social economy to advance equity concerns within sustainability. We examine this potential through local food initiatives in two Canadian cities that are striving to create a synthesis of social and environmental objectives to achieve structural change in the way that food is produced, accessed and consumed. Both projects are founded on commitments to sustainable community development and social justice. While the initiatives illustrate the potential for community transformation by integrating sustainability and the social economy, they also illustrate the challenges associated with an incremental approach to change in the context of competition with mainstream economic activities that are heavily subsidized and do not account for negative social, economic and environmental externalities.

‘Back of the Envelope’: Pragmatic Planning for Sustainable Rural Community Development

Abstract Canadian communities are struggling with a significant infrastructure deficit. Hidden within this challenge is an opportunity to re-envision and re-construct communities using the principles and practices of sustainable community development. Research repeatedly illustrates, however, that communities struggle to implement sustainable alternatives, even when their planning documents are infused with the principles of sustainable development. The purpose of this article is to address this ‘implementation gap’ from a rural perspective. Rural communities face particular capacity barriers to conducting innovative and integrated planning. Using data drawn from a case study of Craik, Saskatchewan, the article presents findings that illustrate a variety of pragmatic techniques rural communities can adopt to bridge the implementation gap and successfully complete sustainable development projects.

Pushing the envelope: market mechanisms for sustainable community development

This paper introduces market mechanisms for sustainable community development, an interdependent planning and implementation framework encompassing strategic directions, strategies, actors and instruments for municipal policy making. It examines how the economy influences the unsustainable development of local jurisdictions and how a coherent typology of strategies, actors and policy levers can move communities toward complementary environmental, social and economic outcomes. The paper illustrates a dichotomy between municipal decision making and embraces economic, social and environmental criteria for development of the built environment. It defines sustainable community development and analyzes research findings from senior decision makers in government, academic institutions, industry and non-profits. After critiquing ‘the market mechanism’ and identifying preferred approaches, the authors propose a typology that systematically aligns market signals with implementing sustainable community development policies.

We Know Enough: Achieving Action Through the Convergence of Sustainable Community Development and the Social Economy

Ten years ago in Johannesburg, there were over 6,000 communities across the world that had taken tangible steps towards implementing sustainability. However, while many have conducted visioning exercises and hired consultants to draw-up sustainability plans, far too often those plans remain on the shelf. In short, we face an implementation gap. Barriers to implementation are less about our technical capacity – we know enough about viable alternatives and solutions – and more about the mobilization of citizens and their governments to enact structural change. In addition, communities are struggling to deliver on the holistic promise of sustainability. Sustainability suffers from policy inflation of increased expectations to deliver development that is economically, socially, and environmentally sound, yet has failed to acknowledge the increasing capacity gap for implementation. We have made great progress on both the economic and environmental dimensions, well encapsulated by the burgeoning green economy. However, Agyeman et al. (2003) and others remind us that the social aspects of sustainability are lagging. The purpose of this chapter is to address these two implementation gaps: mobilization and socializing sustainability. Our approach to these challenges is framed within the context of two concepts: sustainable community development and the social economy. It is our hope to contribute to the discourse surrounding sustainable development and to offer insights, drawn from our research, into how to mobilize sustainable forms of development that offer a truly balanced and holistic interpretation of the sustainability ideal.