A systems approach to livability and sustainability: Defining terms and mapping relationships to link desires with ecological opportunities and constraints

Abstract

I offer a protocol for assessing the sustainability of livability. This protocol draws on a framework developed to assess vulnerability, and offers two key pertinent features. These are (a) a capacity to incorporate multiple and shifting stakeholder values and (b) a means of moving from expressions of livability to underlying ecological attributes that deliver or constrain system change. The applicability of these features to both assessing the sustainability of livability and a reappraisal given system change are illustrated using data from a study site in the French Alps. The central place of values intrudes into livability and sustainability so as to complicate the situation. Even so, the protocol presented here is able to ground the abstractions and equivocation in a transparent and explicit set of announcements. Laying the steps out in the open allows for consistency in comparison and replication without artificially removing the labile flexibility embedded in livability and sustainability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Scotland’s Food and Drink Policy Discussion: Sustainability Issues in the Food Supply Chain

“…Ageing farmers, lack of succession, poor livability of farming communities-were all given as influences which threaten the social sustainability of farming. Overall, livability in farming communities, defined as -a statement of desires related to the contentment with life in a particular location of an individual or set of individuals‖ [17], could be seen as decreasing over time when taking into account the negative remarks present in the farmers' responses and positive reminiscences about the past.…”

Describing the Need for Affordable Livable Sustainable Housing Based on Maslow’s Theory of Need

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“…However, there is an argument that an area is not truly livable unless it can be sustained over the long term (Chazal, 2010). In recent years there has been much talk of the need for sustainable houses and communities.…”

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