| | Community sustainability is a much-debated topic but one not often approached from a visual perspective. Considering that our sight is a large part of how we understand the world around us, Patricia Macklin decided to focus her graduate research on rural community sustainability using cameras.
“To just approach people and ask them to discuss sustainability in their community would be a little overwhelming,” said Macklin. “Getting people to take photos puts the topic in the very real context of daily life. And that is really what community sustainability is all about: the qualities that make people want to live in a place and raise families there.” Twenty three disposable cameras were distributed to a variety of Viking community members, ranging in age from 13 to 86.
The resulting photographs demonstrated that, collectively, all five dimensions of sustainability – economic, environmental, social, cultural and governance – were addressed. This points to the importance of involving a range of individuals when engaging in sustainability planning in order to achieve the most complete picture of a community’s sustainability.
Macklin cautions that it isn’t as straightforward as collecting together a diverse group of people, “Though people may observe the same physical structures and landscapes, the meanings they attach to them can be very different. An example would be the water tower, a piece of infrastructure that appeared in several photographs. The town of Viking gets its water from Edmonton. Thus, for some, the water tower represented a safe, secure water supply which was an advantage in attracting people and industry to the community. To others it represented a hindrance to new industry due to the high cost of that water. A few were uneasy about the loss of community control over a vital resource.” Clearly a single point of visual reference does not represent a common understanding.
Another key finding is that while community development has often been equated with economic development, members of a community are as equally emphatic about the social dimension as they are the economic dimension of sustainability. “These are things like attraction and attachment to the community; and having pride in it,” said Macklin. “Other social aspects people talked about included working together to achieve community projects and volunteering in local organizations,” she added.
Community sustainability will always be a multi-faceted concept, and while for each community, all the dimensions should come into play, the manner in which they do so will be unique to the community. Though citizen engagement can be a challenging, and even frustrating, process, it is a necessary one as at its core, the first issue of community sustainability is having a community to sustain.
Submitted by: Patricia Macklin, Rural Development Division |
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