A Call to Leadership and Collaboration for Regional Sustainability and our Community’s Livable Future

There is no limit to the creative solutions that can be devised to build our sustainable communities. Yet the scale and urgency of change required offers new dimensions and challenges. We must think beyond traditional boundaries and embrace new ways of working together. Join us at the Regional Innovation Forum, where you can learn, engage and connect to many initiatives and solutions for accelerating regional change.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many -- and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.-–President Barack Obama


"If we wait for government, it’ll be too little, too late...If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little...But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time." -Transition Network

An Era of Change

We have entered an era of unprecedented change. Change that is overdue, and no longer merely ideal, but necessary, if we are to alter the course that has put our planet in peril. The destruction and unrestrained use of natural resources serves and yet threatens our way of life—perhaps our very existence. And the current implosion of our economic system well demonstrates that unrestrained economic growth benefiting a few at the expense of many is not sustainable.

The hallmarks of our industrial civilization are crashing down around us. Our lifestyles and consumption habits were built on a foundation of alienation, oppression and debt. It is time for a new moral imperative that speaks to the sanctity of the earth and its precious resources, the value of human life, and the vision of a whole world, of interconnected communities and personal interdependence.

It is time for our communities to reinvent our futures in sustainable models that will serve people efficiently, effectively and with justice. A new social covenant and foundation of a just democratic society requires that these models serve not only this generation, but future generations, without depleting and destroying the planet.

This imagined future requires all of us to systematically rethink our lives, our institutions and our communities. It demands new ways of collaborating, breaking down traditional walls, refusing to accept barriers and re-engaging with each other. It requires new technologies and new systems. If we do it well, it will provide new jobs, a stronger economy and richer, more livable communities. But we cannot just do things better and faster, and there is no time for incremental change. The current crises require transformational change that cannot come quickly enough.

The urgency and scope of the change needed calls for an all-hands-on-deck moment in history. In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke to our need to step up: “For as much as government can do, and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies…. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”

Envisioning the types of structures needed to catalyze and manage effective community change is our first and perhaps greatest challenge. These structures must be dynamic, responsive, and continually evolving. They will be learning organizations. They will be characterized by ethical leadership, transparency and inclusiveness. They will be shaped by the spirit of selflessness, the possibility of creativity and innovation, and the power of moral conviction and intellectual courage. And the work that is accomplished will offer every citizen the hope of meaningful engagement in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and will guarantee to meet every person’s needs for food, clothing and shelter, health, education and employment, with regard to preserving resources for future generations. These principles form the foundation of the 21st century sustainable communities.