True sustainability has three key components: environmental health, economic viability, and equality of opportunity. Separating environmental issues from economics and equity can only result in short-term, partial solutions to the complex problems facing our nation’s communities.

Decades of deregulation and favoring short-term profits over long-term sustainability have resulted in the environmental and economic degradation of our cities. Low-income communities and communities of color have continually borne the brunt of these failures of economic and environmental policies.

In response, our Partners are taking the reins at the local level, working to improve their communities and make them healthier, more livable, and economically prosperous. The Partnership is pushing for a new approach to development and decision-making, a new set of standards in which governments equally weigh economic, environmental, and equity considerations in every decision they make. We are working to ensure that local, regional, and state governments take a proactive role in setting the rules so that corporations are held accountable to high economic and environmental standards, and working poverty and environmental injustice are unacceptable.

By sharing best practices and getting involved in local and regional conversations, we’re helping cities find their place in creating a healthy environment. Our Partners are working to clean up pollution from the past industrial economy, and pushing cities and states to improve environmental regulations. At the same time, our groups are pursuing comprehensive sustainability at the front end, so that environmental degradation, working poverty, and unhealthy development patterns won’t become problems at the back end.

With a new federal government committed to a healthy, green economy, we are lifting up our Partners’ examples of successfully transforming their cities, the relationships they’ve forged with developers, and their strategies for re-forming how industries impact local residents and economies.