Infrastructure & communities : Infrastructure and communities

In addition, the sustainable community is the site of integrated local-level adaptation and mitigation actions that are critical to the arenas of governance, decision-making, and behavioural change. [...] Changes in how people think about and use energy are likely to be a necessary part of achieving our long-term climate goals, both with respect to changes in individual energy use and also with regard to the acceptance of the measures required to achieve collective energy savings relating to transportation, energy and water infrastructure and policy, such as the development of locally-based renewab [...] The concept of a development path helps us make sense of the network of social and material infrastructures that are at play in communities and that ultimately shape energy use and emis- sions profiles. [...] Furthermore, the sustainable community is the site of integration of local-level adaptation and mitigation actions with development choices in the arenas of policy formation, decision-making, governance and behaviour change (Wilbanks and Sathaye 2007) (see Figure 1). [...] Taken together, comprehensive planning for reduc- tion of greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptations to changing local and global conditions, in the context of explicit consideration of the development of community social, economic, and environmental systems, ensures that all development decisions are non-contradictory and, where possible, mutually reinforcing, increasing the resilience of a commun