Local Governance and Sustainability: Major Progress, Significant Challenges

• Author: Jonathan D.Weiss
• Pages: 43-55

Chapter 4

Local Governance and Sustainability: Major

Progress, Significant Challenges

Jonathan D. Weiss

Localities in the United States have made tremendous strides to-

ward sustainability in recent years. Mayors in particular have attracted

increasing notice in responding to climate change and in implement-

ing a number of groundbreaking green measures. This rising profile of

local leadership on issues of sustainability, perhaps best epitomized

by Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, and the strong progress of other

local sustainability efforts is indeed a positive trend. At the same time,

this trend can often obscure the difficult challenges that remain for lo-

cal sustainability—namely, our sprawling land use patterns; frag-

mented regional governance and cooperation; and the limits of what is

possible without active support from federal and state governments.

This chapter first discusses recent progress toward sustainability

made by mayors and other local entities. It then explores the chal-

lenges that remain to the advancement of such local efforts. Finally,

the chapter recommends changes in law and policy to address these

challenges. Ultimately,such changes are needed at all levels of gover-

nance in order to bring about an integrated approach to local sustain-

ability. Local governments cannot do it alone.

Local Progress Toward Sustainability

To discuss local progress toward sustainability, this chapter adopts

what are popularly called the “three Es” of sustainable develop-

ment—environment, economics, and (social) equity. This framework

reflects the goal of sustainable development, adopted at the United

Nations Rio Earth Summit in 1992, as “development that is economi-

cally efficient, socially equitable, and responsible and environmen-

tally sound.”1A key for localities is to strive to bring together all three

of these components, particularly environmental considerations, as

part of an integrated decisionmaking process. Pursuing local sus-

tainability can take many forms. Agenda 21, the action plan to imple-

ment the principles of the Rio Declaration, cited among other things

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