The term "sustainable communities" has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "green cities," "eco-communities," "livable cities" and "sustainable cities."
Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to achieve sustainable outcomes. A major goal of environmental planning is to create sustainable communities, which aim to conserve and protect undeveloped land.
John Whitelegg is visiting professor of sustainable transport at Liverpool John Moores University and professor of sustainable development at University of York's Stockholm Environment Institute.
Steven A. Cohen is an American academic who has taught public management and environmental policy at Columbia University since 1981. He is the former executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and now serves as a senior advisor for the institute. He is a professor in the practice of public affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is also the director of the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy in the School of International and Public Affairs and the director of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management in the School of Professional Studies. He served on the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator's National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (2002–2004). He currently serves on the board of directors of Homes for the Homeless, faculty advisory committee for the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University, and the admissions committee of the Lotos Club. Cohen is the lead independent director of the board of directors of the Willdan Group, Inc. Cohen also sits on the judging committee for the Yidan Prize Foundation. He served on the advisory board of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (2016-2022).
Matthew E. Kahn is a leading American educator in the field of environmental economics. He is the Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. Between 2019 and 2021, he served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business, with appointments at both Carey Business School and Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Applied sustainability is the application of science and innovation, including the insights of the social sciences, to meet human needs while indefinitely preserving the life support systems of the planet.
Robert Doyle Bullard is an American academic who is the former Dean of the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs and is currently a Distinguished Professor at Texas Southern University. Previously Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, Bullard is known as the "father of environmental justice". He has been a leading campaigner against environmental racism, as well as the foremost scholar of the problem, and of the Environmental Justice Movement which sprung up in the United States in the 1980s.
Sheldon Krimsky was a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, and adjunct professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Louise Chawla is a Professor emerita in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado.
Eric Holt Giménez is an agroecologist, political economist, lecturer and author. From 1975 to 2002 he worked in Mexico, Central America and South Africa in sustainable agricultural development. During this time he helped to start the Campesino a Campesino Movement. He returned to the U.S. twice during this period: once for his M.Sc. in international agricultural development and then for his Ph.D. in environmental studies. His dissertation research was the basis for his first book Campesino a Campesino: Voices from the farmer-to-farmer movement for sustainable agriculture in Latin America. After receiving his Ph.D. with an emphasis in agroecology and political economy, he taught as a university lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and Boston University in the International Honors Program in Global Ecology. He gives yearly courses of food systems transformation and social movements in Italy in the Masters program of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo and in the doctoral program at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, La Jornada and The Des Moines Register. He has a blog on the Huffington Post.
Lawrence E. Susskind is a scholar of conflict resolution and consensus-building in urban planning. He is one of the founders of the field of public dispute mediation and is a practicing international mediator through the Consensus Building institute. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1971, where he is Ford Professor of Environmental Planning.
Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the fields of urban planning, environmental policy, and sustainable development with a focus on the intersection of social justice and sustainability in the local environment. The journal's audience and contributors include "researchers, activists, non-governmental organisations, students, teachers, policy makers and practitioners". It is published monthly by Routledge and was established in 1996. The editor-in-chief is Julian Agyeman of Tufts University. Associate editors are Stewart Barr of Exeter (UK), Michelle Thompson-Fawcett of Otago (NZ), and Robert Krueger of Worcester Polytechnic University (USA). According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 1.928. It was ranked 13th among top urban studies and planning journals and 18th among sustainable development journals in 2018.
Sverker Sörlin is a Swedish historian of ideas, professor of environmental history, and writer.
Karl Anders Torbjörn Gullberg is a Swedish social scientist, urban historian, technology historian, and former adjunct professor at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger is a full professor, senior executive, an international expert in policy, law and governance on climate change, biodiversity, human rights, trade, investment and financial law and the world's Sustainable Development Goals. She currently serves as Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge, UK; executive secretary of the global Climate Law and Governance Initiative (CLGI) and senior director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). She is also a Fellow in Law & LLM/MCL Director of Studies at the Lucy Cavendish College; fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law; visiting fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy and Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Energy, Environment & Natural Resource Governance. Further, she is full professor at the University of Waterloo School of Environment, Enterprise and Development in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, where she is also senior fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) and senior advisor to the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change (IC3). She serves as chair of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Biodiversity Law & Governance Initiative; rapporteur for the International Law Association Committee on Sustainable Natural Resources Management; co-founder member of the board of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of Canada; member of the International Law Association (ILA) Board of Canada; co-founder and councillor of the World Future Council.
Justin B. Hollander is an American urban planning and design scholar. He is a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (1996) degree from Tufts, a Masters in Regional Planning (2000) from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Ph.D. (2007) degree from the E.J. Bloustein School of Policy and Planning at Rutgers.
Arthur C. Nelson is an American urban planner, researcher and academic. He is Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona.
Shafiqul Islam is a Bangladeshi American researcher, academic and author. He is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor of Water Diplomacy at Tufts University. He serves as the Director of Water Diplomacy. He is also the Founding Editor of the Water Diplomacy Series.
Robert Bernard Gottlieb is an American academic, activist, journalist, and writer. From 1997 to 2015, he was the Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy at Occidental College where he also served as co-founder and executive director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute. He has written fourteen books on regional politics and economies, global cities, and environmental, food, and social justice topics.
Sheila Rose Foster is a legal scholar, and an author. She is a tenured Professor of Climate at the Columbia Climate School.
