State Models for Sustainable Development

Communities throughout the United States and around the world are taking a new approach toward solving their economic, environmental, social, and financial problems. Instead of assigning problems to isolated parts of government, the issues are increasingly being explored in an integrated manner, bringing together all concerned departments. Instead of maximizing current consumption with extractive, polluting industries and impersonal, inefficient governments, communities are striving to transform themselves to prosper in the long-run. It begins with the bringing together of all interests—business, government, environmental, labor, and public—to find new ways to operate which meet the needs of both the present and future generations