Office of Sustainable Communities (EPA)

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to launch a pilot program in February 2010. The program involved the creation of the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities. The purpose of this initiative is to help communities take

“…an integrated approach in making environmental, housing and transportation decisions.”

They are hoping to assist in help develop the economies of communities in conjunction with sustainable practices. This will hopefully allow different areas set goals that they can work towards achieving. There are several areas that they are promoting to improve, but they are also hoping to guide communities into coming up with their own ideas and initiatives.

This new office is supposed to assist in the collaborative work already started between EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. These parties are all working to evaluate, develop plans, and implement “community-level sustainability measures.” They created this office at the same time as they are launching two other pilot programs. One program is to clean up our water systems and the other is to help clean up brownfield sites. All of these areas have received at least some funding and will hopefully all be successful.

The creation of this new office has potential to be a really great asset to promote sustainability at a very practical level. It is a lot easier for people to start to make small changes in the way they live and plan their communities if they are given some direction by authoritative departments and agencies. I have for instance, just gained my LEED Green Associate designation. It is a standard for building and planning that promotes sustainable practices. It is not the only standard, but I have found it to be a legitimate start in the changing of our approach to developing communities sustainably. A lot of the standard involves just taking an approach that keeps sustainability at the forefront of the planning process. This new office allows for a trickle down effect to happen.

The trickle down effect will hopefully involve policy changes to occur from the government departments all the way down to the lowest community. It will also keep up momentum as more and more communities embrace this way of thinking and living. Two examples of communities that have started really interesting sustainable programs are Dockside Green (see video) and The Solaire. The creation of the Office of Sustainable Communities will continue to help these types of communities to develop around the nation and the world. There are a number of ways policies could be affected as there is growing support for sustainable communities. The goal of these initiatives will be to ensure communities that are better living environments at all levels for its inhabitants and more environmentally conscious communities.