Changing Problematic
Societal Values & Beliefs
ArticlesDevelopment Charges: A Lost Opportunity
to Encourage Sustainable Urban Development
by Ray Tomalty, Ph.D.
Our values and beliefs have a profound impact on virtually all aspects of our individual and collective existence. Values and beliefs emerge from a variety of factors including family, education, personal life experience and social norms. Our values and beliefs are a fundamental cause of unsustainable development in that they often support existing practices and institutions with negative environmental consequences that go unexamined: consumerism, a fixation on economic growth at any cost, the belief in technological fixes for environmental problems, and the notion of land as an endless resource that has no value until put under the bulldozer or plow. In addition, many of our values and priorities are profoundly anti-urban, e.g., the idea of the city as the antithesis of nature, the widespread preference for the car-dependent "freedom" of low-density suburbs, and the aversion of many to the social, ethnic and racial diversity that gives cities their vitality and character.
In order to encourage and create sustainable cities, we have to render the negative environmental and urban implications of our everyday beliefs visible, and propose alternate ways of thinking about and perceiving urban environments. In addition, this section of The Agenda will explore how our values and beliefs interact with the seven root causes of unsustainable urban development.
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