Summary

What can a sustainable community do? There is much to consider, but here are a few ideas to get started.

• Identifying needs is the only way to determine where it’s appropriate to live and innovate to fulfill resource demand.
• Carrying capacity is an assessment of the finite resources and capabilities of land that results in optimal community populations.
• Local food or growing capacity for sustainable agriculture is a fundamental requirement for building self-sufficient communities.
• Local production helps reduce the transportation of materials worldwide, saving energy, eliminating packaging, and lowering pollution.
• Building structures should be from local materials, which means innovation in material design and full lifecycle planning.
• Renewable energy decreases pollution, distribution line-loss, fire risk, and overall cost while increasing grid stability, safety, and use accountability.
• Reducing car dependency decreases transportation costs, manufacturing, pollution, resource consumption, accidents, injuries, and deaths.
• Disadvantages of the community as a solution include the challenges and knowledge required to become mostly self-sufficient, the ongoing difficulty of depending on and cooperating with other people, and the potentially large investment to design and build.