Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Cultural sustainability has begun to emerge as a crucial domain of community development and holistic sustainability but has little in the way of standardized tools for implementing and evaluating successful practices. The cultural sustainability assessment framework designed in this presentation uses of a set of standardized indicators to assess the vitality of the cultural sustainability of a community. The indicators are developed from the synthesis of concepts in cultural sustainability theory into a structured yet adaptive approach to accommodate any context while still providing a foundational framework. By combining academic and local knowledge, unique cultural variables informed by the community themselves can be coded into the standard set of indicators, creating a flexible framework adaptable to the complex variations in culture. The assessment framework adopts qualitative and quantitative methods found in natural and social science approaches to identify trends in sustainability themes specific to culture. By concluding what findings mean for cultural sustainability, the assessment report can be used as a precursor to developing strategies for community led cultural sustainability initiatives and ensure development projects consider, and build on, already present cultural values. With the assessment data these projects can be more successfully planned, implemented, and their impact evaluated. This presentation describes each cultural sustainability indicator, how it was developed, why it is important to cultural sustainability, and gives sample variables for assessing its condition within a community. Included is a case study applying the cultural sustainability assessment framework to a community experiencing a rapidly changing environment.