By all current standards City Center Las Vegas is considered sustainable development. Encompassing almost 17,000 mixed use sq ft and located in an urban core, it boasts 6 LEED Gold accredited buildings. Yet, when reading Roseland's article this is the project that sprung to mind as an exemplar of "importing sustainability (Roseland 2000 pg. 93)."
On its surface, sure, City Center is sustainable--at least our best accreditation agency to date says it is--and provides the local community with numerous jobs, both construction and long-term. In our current state of large-scale unemployment, it is hard to argue against such 'green' projects. But, dig only slightly deeper--just past the LEED horizon--and some basic questions remain unanswered.
For example, where will the water come from? Will it continue to be "imported" to meet the demands of larger urban populations? And at the expense of farmers or the native flora and fauna? Subsequently, where will the food come from? Will it too have to be "imported?" In asking only these simple logistical questions it quickly becomes apparent that City Center is only as sustainable as its supply of affordable water and transportation.
Put simply, City Center was developed under the economic growth model, ie economic growth is always good, but it fails to account for system components as basic as local food and water. As Roseland points out "Economic growth with an ecological deficit is anti-economic and makes us poorer rather than richer in the long-term (Roseland 2000 pg. 98; cited from Daly and Cobb, 1989)."
This is what I take away as the essence of Roseland's article, that we need a new model of development based not solely on the economics, but rather holistic in its view of interconnected linkages of society and nature. In short, a development that makes much more wise use of our "natural" and "social capital."
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