Sociology and the Sustainable Community Strategies

Sociology and the sustainable community strategies
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Introduction
In sociology, the social relations of people and institutions are studied. In this paper we are going to study sociology at the social level. We are going to assess the new “Sustainable Communities” movement used in regional planning and community development and the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to urban planning as a solution to ecological concerns, economic and racial isolation, and market segmentation. We are also going to look at the impact regional planning and downtown development projects have on the process of community building. We are also going to explain how spatial inequality is a prospective process. The aim of this paper is to assess the various factors affecting social reasons and the impact they have on community sustainability.
Sustainable communities’ movement
The new sustainable communities’ movement has been developed to mitigate the various problems facing different communities. These problems include urban sprawl, racial segregation, environmental degradation, and poor housing facilities among others. The movement starts projects to address these issues through environmental conservation, energy conservation, ecosystem management, improving lifestyles, and through biodiversity. This movement incorporates all the members of the society in their operations to have a pool of varied skills which can be used to achieve its various objectives.
Advantages and disadvantages of the sustainable communities’ movement
This approach has various advantages and disadvantages when used in urban planning as a solution to ecological concerns. Ecology refers to the relationship between living things and their environment. The sustainable community movement tries to maintain a stable ecology in a society through environmental conservation and by maintaining a healthy environment for the people in that society. This movement integrates various people including building owners and managers in their efforts to maintain the healthy living environments which helps in maintaining a stable ecological balance because they people living in a healthy environment can relate well with their surroundings. This movement ensures that people live in healthy environments by ensuring that building owners locate their buildings in human friendly environments (Building-Healthy-Places-Toolkit). This serves as an advantage of using the sustainable community movement as an approach of urban planning in maintaining a stable ecosystem. This movement also ensures that the community uses renewable energy and recycles organic and inorganic waste to reduce pollution and wastes (lecture1). However, this approach may act as a disadvantage when the movement is more concerned with the maintenance of a stable and sustainable economic environment and therefore end up using all the available resources in the community to sustain economic growth therefore neglecting other important factors such as the maintenance of a stable ecological environment.
The use of sustainable community movement as an approach in urban planning as a solution to social and racial isolation has its a...