Paths to urban sustainability, James Cook University,\ud Townsville

This paper provides a transition path from sustainability intent to sustainability implementation. The inseparable nature of land use and consequent urban travel to and through activity centres provides an example of implementation methodology, drawing on north Queensland urban travel research and one-day Paths to sustainability workshop at James Cook University in 2008.\ud \ud The goal of a 90-person workshop was to help guide university decision-makers on making the campus and proposed $B1.3 expansion into a vibrant urban hub, a ‘living laboratory’ and a ‘sustainability exemplar’. This paper uses the JCU aspiration as the means to present a ‘new way’ of planning. The urgency of issues like food-kilometres, global warming and peak oil, along with all planning law and policy demands that we proceed with sustainable urban travel options, from Transit Oriented Development to the development of safe, smooth, direct, continuous and broad paths to and through urban activity centres.\ud \ud This paper details developing theoretical frames which informed and grew from the workshop, comparing that with current urban sustainability literature and ways to quantify alternative development scenarios to support the uptake of Sustainability Implementation Planning - SIP projects.\ud \ud By combining locally advanced and integrated thinking on SIP with emergent quantifiable sustainability index measures and standing sustainability law and policy, this paper constructs the framework for a new form of science: Sustainability Implementation Science, applicable to SIP. \ud \ud The complexity of multi dimension issues and stakeholders, current and future, in implementing urban sustainability means decision-makers need guidance in breaking with the ‘old way’ and implementing the far more challenging planning ‘new way’ of inclusive and cohesive planning. Designing for people access with minimised fossil fuel footprint to and through activity centres is a good lead example of how to achieve SIP. \u