Photo by Mastery of Maps on Flickr.

Making American cities sustainable is about much more than just greener buildings. Programs such as economic development initiatives can contribute to sustainability and need to incorporate equity for residents, said speakers on a recent panel at the National Building Museum.

The Penn Institute for Urban Research, along with the Urban Institute, Next American City, and the National Building Museum sponsored Tuesday’s panel discussion on “Urban Sustainability Initiatives: Challenges and Opportunities.”

Speakers included Dr. Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secre­tary for Policy Development and Research at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Rolf Pendall of the Urban Institute; Anita Hairston of PolicyLink; Dr. Catherine Ross from Georgia Tech’s College of Archi­tecture; Paul Brophy of the Brookings Institution; and Eugenie Birch of the Penn Institute.

Instead of the typical focus of many sustainability panels on how designing, renovating or refitting greener buildings can bring jobs, panelists instead talked about how economic development itself can contribute to sustainability.

In older industrial cities, policymakers will have to find ways to make those cities more attractive to both attract and retain people. Without public policy actions, most people would otherwise settle in high-growth areas, putting additional strain on already-scarce resources such as water and land.

Neighborhoods in these cities (and elsewhere) also need to become attractive to bring in knowledge workers and help the low-income population. Besides the ethical value of helping low-income people, a large low-income population in a city increases negative perceptions of a region and hurts its global economic competitiveness.

To achieve this, all levels of government will have to think creatively about sustainability planning, given scarce financial resources. Communities will have to find ways to incentivize private actors, both for-profit and nonprofit, and link their self-interests and the interests of the whole community.

While places are important, making sustainable places is really about people, and allowing people to do what they need to in a place. Dr. Bostic gave an example of how local government employees find themselves priced out of living in the Southern California community where they worked. He argued that the people will ultimately be what allow a place to succeed.

The other speakers also referenced the importance of the people to the place. Dr. Ross contended that sustainability should be resident-driven, neighborhood-focused, and empowerment-oriented. Ms. Hairston said that demographic changes will produce big economic disparities in the country’s metropolitan regions. Referencing his work in local government, Mr. Brophy argued that increasing regulation of federal funds (to decrease corruption, among other reasons) has made it difficult to attract creative people to work on those programs.

Mr. Pendall said policymakers need to recognize that there are different policy impacts and priorities for different populations. With regard to environmental concerns, the focus should be on the effect of larger housing lot sizes and vehicle miles traveled rather than only on increasing density and access to public transportation. Larger lot sizes result in more spread-out housing and other land use patterns, while many low-income families depend on private automobiles to travel to jobs, schools, or other opportunities outside their communities or inaccessible by public transportation.

Speakers referenced several HUD and nonprofit programs they felt were making a difference in communities, including Strong Cities, Strong Communities. But they also listed other challenges confronting urban regions, especially in light of the acceleration of processes and globalization. These problems include managing vacant urban land for rational use and dealing with the large number of single-family suburban homes that will be coming into the housing market in the near future as baby boomers move to different homes in retirement.

Economic development can provide a powerful tool for helping communities grow within their means. And the developments and other assets communities create today will likely be with them far into the future.