Planning for Sustainability: Experiences in Two Contrasting Communities

Abstract

As natural-resource-based economies continue to change, local planning will play a pivotal part in managing their transition. This research examines the role played by planning in defining a vision of sustainability in two such communities in the Canadian Pacific Northwest. The case studies are important in several respects: they illustrate that sustainability can be an important organizing theme in planning a community's response to change; they show that through planning, concepts of sustainability can evolve from individual to collective definitions; and they illustrate planning-based efforts to manage change. In the communities examined here, planners played an especially influential role in the transition process: they helped define possibilities.