Indicators of Sustainable Community

View the Indicators of Sustainable Community report - 1998(PDF)  

Regional Sustainability Indicators Commons

Sustainable Seattle is acknowledged worldwide as a leader in the development of regional sustainability indicators based on citizens’ values and goals for their communities.  Redefining Progress, an independent organization, surveyed over 170 sustainability projects around the country and found that at least 90 of them used Sustainable Seattle as a model for their own initiatives.  In 1996, the Sustainable Seattle Indicators were recognized by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements with an “Excellence in Indicators Best Performance” by the Community Sector, awarded at the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul, Turkey.   Sustainable Seattle also received the Puget Sound Regional Council’s Vision 2020 Award. 

After the release of its 1998 Indicators, Sustainable Seattle decided to reassess its indicator program.  The board was concerned that merely publishing the indictors, as Sustainable Seattle did in 1993, 1995 and 1998, was not sufficient and that a successful program should include programs which support actions by citizens, businesses and policy makers to affect the trends documented by the indicators.   It has taken several years for the organization to build the professional staff capacity to support an expanded indicator program. 

In addition, Sustainable Seattle has been interested in expanding its capability to develop indicators at the neighborhood scale along with the regional scale.  Since 2003, Sustainable Seattle has been involved in the collection of data and the development of indicators at the neighborhood level.  With this program on the way, it is now timely for the organization to turn its attention back to the development and tracking of regional indicators. 

Progress toward a Sustainable Future - King County Sustainability Indicators and Strategic Actions Project

In 2004, after a 6-year hiatus to reconsider its mission and its future, Sustainable Seattle decided to put together a group of 24 decision-makers and empower them to steer the new indicator program toward a product that will move the King County region toward sustainability with compelling indicators and strategies for action. The Indicators Steering Committee met first in December 2004 and chose as its mission "to move the King County region toward sustainability with compelling indicators and strategies for action". The Steering Committe also developed goals, principles , and a framework for the project. As with Sustainable Seattle's previous Indicator Projects, the process is orchestrated to involve and tap the expertise of a wide range of people in the community. On April 30, Sustainable Seattle will convene a Civic Panel of over 150 civic leaders – environmental groups, city and county government representatives, labor, the religious community, business leaders, educators, students, and social activists review and revise the indicators. We will engage the Civic Leaders first to fill out a list of existing conditions and desired future conditions, and a related set of indicators. The indicators will be selected from a combination of existing indicator sets. We will seek to identify no more than 70 indicators. Sustainable Seattle staff and the steering committee will develop a starting list of existing conditions (assets and concerns) as well as some future conditions. Preparation for the first Civic Leader (CV) meeting will also include a working list of indicators assembled mainly from existing local indicator sets along with some from other lists that are worth considering.

The Technical Advisor (TA) group will then refine the conditions and the indicator list. Then the staff and Steering Committee will develop a working list of indicators. This will be submitted to the Civic Leaders and Technical Advisor groups for review and to the Sustainable Seattle Board for approval.

Next, as staff and volunteers research and analyze the data for the indicators, the Civic Leaders will start identify effective targets for making change happen. An ideal outcome for this phase is the identification of 5 to 10 opportunities for effective change. These will connect the indicators to future visions. The opportunities will be leverage points where large effects can be obtained from relatively smaller actions. System components and dynamics will be described.

Staff and the Steering Committee will refine the strategies developed by the Civic Leaders and the Technical Advisors. These concepts will be refined by the Steering Committee before being approved by the Sustainable Seattle Board.

The CL and TE groups will be asked to identify important players, ideas for engaging them, resources, possible coalitions for taking action. The thrust will be to layout the important components for strategic action. We will also ask for recommendations for continuation of implementation plans beyond the scope of this project. In effect we will be asking for a 5 year plan to implement actions.

Finally, staff and the Steering Committee will develop a draft report that describes the actions and strategies. The report will be reviewed by the CL and TE groups, and then reviewed by the Sustainable Seattle board. Once approved we will move toward reporting and implementation. The form reporting will take is left open for now. However, the fundamental idea will be to generate enthusiasm for using the indicators and engage various citizens and organizations, in all sectors, to join in implementing the actions plans.

Other Indicator Programs in the Region

Since Sustainable Seattle issued its first Indicators of a Sustainable Community in 1993, other organizations throughout the world have joined in the effort to use indicators to assess and monitor environmental and social trends.  In our region, one of the most worthy efforts is Communities Count: Social and Health Indicators across King County.  This effort researched a wealth of data specifically linked to the well-being of people and communities in the region.  By design, it does not include environmental or comprehensive economic indicators.  Sustainable Seattle participated in the planning and management of this effort, and plans to incorporate some of the Communities Count data into our own analyses. 

Northwest Environment Watch also recently released its Cascadia Scorecard, Seven Key Trends Shaping the Northwest.  The seven N.E.W. indicators aggregate discrete environmental and human health statistics to create a snapshot picture of the Pacific Northwest.  While they do an excellent job at presenting the big picture for a large region and support policy actions at the regional level, their scale is much larger than that of Sustainable Seattle’s indicators and they do not lend themselves to actions at the personal, neighborhood or local policy level.  

None of the current indicators for the Seattle/King County area are comprehensive, (i.e., attempting to link factors affecting communities, ecology and economy), and few were developed using a fully participatory approach (i.e., involving the community in a visioning process to develop long term goals and indicators that measure progress toward those goals).  Additional local indicators include the King County Benchmarks that report on progress in implementing the King County Countywide Planning Policies and the City of Seattle’s Information Technology Indicators for a Healthy Community.

Process of Developing Indicators

There are two general approaches to developing indicators for whole populations (e.g., cities, states, or nations).   One approach relies on experts to determine the appropriate indicator for measuring a trend.  The other relies on a grass roots approach and is tied to participants’ values.  Many programs use a combination of citizen involvement combined with advice from technical experts. In the Sustainable Seattle model, citizen values and needs drive the process but scientific data and methods provide the foundation for indicators so that the selected metrics are understandable and valid. The process is iterative, with information moving among and being discussed by: 1) the general public, 2) a group of civic leaders, and 3) a group of technical advisors.

Several researchers from the academic community believe that the process of developing and selecting indicators is at least as important as publishing them.  For example, Innes and Booher believe that “the process of debating the design of indicators shapes the players’ thinking about the policies. Agreement on indicators helps get agreement on policy. The production and discussion of indicators in an agency or in the public arena focuses organizational and political attention on the issues they represent and gives them legitimacy. Their use can change the terms of public discourse over the long term ”. 

Innes also believes that if “an indicator is to be useful, it must be clearly associated with a policy or set of possible actions. There will never be agreement on an indicator unless there is agreement on policy. The indicator does not lead to the policy, but agreement on policy can be advanced by discussion of how to design suitable indicators.  The ideal method may be to develop the policy in the process of developing the indicator.”

A participatory process has the added advantage of creating shared values and understanding among people who are working together through the process.  Robert Putnam  in his book “Bowling Alone” blames the lack of opportunities for people to interact with one another through social and political mechanisms for many key modern problems, such as the tragedy of the commons and NIMBYism.  Kent E. Portney  sees the opportunity for cities to redress this problem by creating initiatives that are designed to engage residents and build a shared understanding and vision of the city and its environment.

“Indicators a society chooses to report to itself about itself are surprisingly powerful.  They reflect collective values and inform collective decisions.  A nation that keeps a watchful eye on its salmon runs or the safety of its streets makes different choices than does a nation that is only paying attention to its GNP.  The idea of citizens choosing their own indicators is something new under the sun – something intensely democratic. ”

Sustainable Seattle, with its participatory approach to development of indicators, is the only local effort that fully involved the community into the development and updates of its indicators and is comprehensive in dealing with all aspects of sustainable development.  In preparing the 2005 update to its indicators, Sustainable Seattle will again have a diverse Steering Committee to guide the project and will seek to involve citizens in the discussion about indicators that reflect their aspirations and concerns for our region and its future.  Our goal is to provide a forum for engaging a broad cross section of the community in a discussion of issues of concern and how to work together toward a better future. 
 
Additionally, the 2005 Indicators will be designed to be actionable at the personal and policy level.  Each indicator will be considered based on its ability to support actions that will improve the trend.  Sustainable Seattle will work closely with local leaders to identify leverage points for each indicator.

Criteria for Indicators

Indicators are as varied as the types of systems they monitor. However, there are certain characteristics that effective indicators have in common. Relevant; Reflect community values; Attractive to local media; Statistically measurable; Logically or scientifically defensible; Reliable; Leading; and Policy-relevant.

Small actions and choices can have major, although unpredictable effects in determining what comes next. Among the possibilities is that the thousands of experiments and millions of choices to live more conciously will coalesce into a new civilization that fosters community, provides possibilities for meaning, and sustains life for the planet.

-Sarah Van Gelder, Editor, YES! A Journal of Positive Futures