When attempting to create a sustainable development, there are three primary factors you must consider. The environmental, social, and economic implications of a development must be balanced to provide the optimal condition. Each arm of a sustainable development must be addressed, and there's much more to it than just building a green home which addresses the issues of environmental sustainability. In this post, I'm going to examine each arm of sustainable development in its extreme and bring them together in balance at the end.
The Environmental Arm
This is the first thing that comes to mind when sustainability is discussed. The extreme of this arm is an absolutely “green home” which strives for zero impact on the surrounding environment. An absolute green home can be imagined as one which is closely integrated with the environment. It uses completely biodegradable building materials, disturbs none of the wildlife, uses unobtrusive technology such as passive solar, and produces zero waste. All of that at the cost of comfort to the occupant. It is an attempt to use as few resources and as little space as physically possible so that they can be replenished, and it will leave no discernible mark when the occupant is gone.
When focusing on just the environmental aspect, cost and comfort go out the window, so we won't look at those quite yet. It can be assumed that the cost will rise and comfort will fall. Those are the sacrifices necessary to live in an extreme situation. The positive aspect of this arm is that the occupant would live in complete harmony with his or her environment, and the impact of their life on the area would be zero to negligible. The health of the occupant will also be improved as it will not suffer from the emission problems many cities have.
The Economic Arm
The goal of purely economic building is to throw up a structure as quickly as possible with as little cost to the developer as can be achieved. It just has to stand long enough for the buyer to purchase it. In this arm, we are completely discounting the environmental and social implications of doing business in this way. Naturally, if you're building with only cost and speed in mind, you would have little concern for the health and safety of the occupants nor the ecosystem.
This arm is all about maximizing your immediate profit. To clear out large plots of land, you would slash-and-burn until you had a wide expanse of land that you could fill shoulder to shoulder with shacks. This is a popular model for a certain segment of developers, the fly-by-night variety, because it's all about the money they can make today instead of building a reputation for the future.
The Social Arm
The social aspect of development is the central piece which ties together the economic and environmental arms. The extreme of this arm is that you build a large, affordable house which is extremely comfortable. The developer makes no profit, and the environment surrounding the property is destroyed. It's all about making the customer happy right now without any thought to the future.
This is a bad way to build because it will waste material and resources. Ultimately, the operating costs of the home will be enormous, and the health of the occupant will suffer because of the lack of concern for the surrounding area. It's also a horrible model for a business to run on because they will go bankrupt quickly.
Defining Sustainable Development
Now that we're familiar with the extremes of each arm, let's look at the middle ground. A sustainable development is one where the buyer is comfortable, the impact on the environment is low, and the profit to the developer is high. Resources are used logically, and they are replenished naturally. All around, a sustainable development is a green home which is also a dream home.
The word, “sustainable” is tagged on to all sorts of other terms now, but the most important sustainability is the total sustainability of all parties involved. A sustainable development is one where all of the parties walk away happy, and they remain that way in the long term. It unifies the concern of your customers with concern for your business and provides a way that both can survive and thrive by preserving the ecosystem which supports us all.
If I had to sum it up in a sentence, it would be this: Sustainable development is a building practice which strikes a balance between providing our desires for the present and our needs in the future.