Community sustainability: a holistic approach to measuring the sustainability of rural communities in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Although sustainable development was defined in the Brundtland Report almost 30 years ago, the current usage of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development remain highly equivocal. In the context of rural communities, multiple interpretations and weak definitions lead to confusion in understanding what comprises a sustainable rural community. Building on existing definitions (e.g. Baker’s, 2006, ‘Ladder of Sustainable Development’), models (principally, The Egan Review’s, 2004, ‘Components of Sustainable Communities’) and findings of this study, a sustainable community is defined and a holistic model of a sustainable place-based rural community is presented. This model, the sustainable community design (SCD) is used as the basis for analysing community sustainability, which is measured using mixed methods and scorecard assessment. Sensitivity of the method is demonstrated with inter- and intra-community variations in sustainability across three diverse Scottish rural communities. Intra-community variations illustrate heterogeneity in community sustainability, explain ambiguity in characterisations of an individual community’s sustainability, and highlight the importance of an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to community development. The SCD framework is presented as a useful tool for meso-level sustainability assessment and to facilitate the sustainable development of rural communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable communities
• indicator
• scorecard
• community development
• rural
• mixed method

Acknowledgements

The author is especially grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council and Natural Environment Research Council; The Stockholm Environment Institute for use of the REAP; and Dr Robert McCulloch, Dr Ian Moffatt, Dr Geoff Fagan and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and Natural Environment Research Council joint studentship award [PTA-036-2005-00010].