• Background
• Livability and Sustainability
• Characteristics of Good Indicators
• How Can My Community Develop Indicators?
• Suggested Indicators

Community indicators are used to measure progress, to engage community members in a dialogue about the future, and to change community outcomes (Redefining Progress). An indicator can be defined as something that helps you understand where you are, which way you are going and how far you are from where you want to be (Sustainable Measures). As noted by the Green Mountain Institute, regardless of the particular definition one chooses to use for indicators, common to almost all are three core elements: Indicators represent the important elements and relationships within a system, they are information-based tools (i.e., their development and use is based upon either the availability of information or the intent to collect information), and they seek to communicate meaningful information about complex systems in a more transparent and understandable way.

The development of indicators or measures is a critical means for achieving community livability, since indicators are necessary to track progress toward livability. Also, the involvement of local diverse stakeholders in the development of indicators is often a good mechanism for building local communication, consensus and commitment.

Background:

Indicators have been used for years in assessing and managing aspects of our society such as the economy, public health and the environment. More recently, much work as been done on developing indicators for the over-all condition of countries, communities and private sector enterprises.

Much of this work has been done in response to the 1992 Earth Summit which led to the world-wide adoption of the principle of sustainable development. In the U.S., the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), established in 1993 and with members from many different sectors of society, developed several sets of recommendations along with a "We Believe" statement, a "vision" statement, a set of national goals and a preliminary set of indicators.

As recommended by the PCSD, the U.S. Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI Group), expanded upon the PCSD's work and developed an indicator framework and an experimental set of 40 indicators.

In addition to these national efforts, much work on indicators has been completed or is underway in U. S. Communities (examples of many projects). Community indicators can be use to track progress toward community goals, engage citizens in an on-going dialogue, measure and improve management activities, and assess the condition of some valued resource as well as the status and trends of the factors that will affect the long-term health of the resource (Green Mountain Institute).

Finally, a number of private firms are developing sustainability indicators (for examples, see the "Related Links" portion of this web site).

Livability and Sustainability:

The work of the PCSD and the SDI Group led to a focus on the social, economic and environmental "endowments" or "capacities" passed on to our children, thus reflecting a concern for the future as well as for the present. In developing livable community indicators, the SDI Group recommends that communities develop indicators that reflect this concern for the future as well as the present and move toward making communities more livable both today and tomorrow.

The SDI Group also recommends that communities develop indicators for the full range of topics reflected in sustainability, i.e., the social, environmental and economic aspects of their communities.

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Characteristics of Good Indicators:

The well being of a community can be measured in many ways. Traditional measurements often analyze a single issue by itself, such as the number of new jobs, but such an approach is one-dimensional and does not reveal the quality of those jobs or their impact on the local economy. However, multidimensional measures such as the number of children living in poverty, for example, gives some indication of the relationship of social health to local economic performance. Additional examples of more meaningful measures are the energy and materials inputs to manufacturing or pollutants per unit of output, since these help relate the economy to the environment and support improved decisions in both areas.

To the extent possible, indicators should:

• Reflect a trend, with a timeline appropriate to the topic
• Be verifiable and reproducible
• Be readily understandable
• Reflect community circumstances and goals as well as relationships to the region and the nation
• Be supported by data
• Provide information for understanding the relationships between the economic, environmental, and social elements inherent in livable communities.

How Can My Community Develop Indicators?

As noted by Sustainable Measures, there is no quick solution for developing community indicators. Although the following section provides possible indicators, indicators for your community cannot be developed and imposed by someone from outside your community. They need to be developed and implemented by the community itself or they will not be useful. Outside experts can provide assistance, but ultimately people in the community are the experts on their community. Community members need to be the driving force behind becoming a livable community now and for future generations.

This web site thus cannot provide you with a complete set of ready-made indicators for your community. However, in addition to the suggested indicators in the "Possible Indicators" section and the examples of community indictor work in the "Example Work" section, information on developing indicators is available from the sources provided in the "Related Links" portion of this web site. Several of these sources (e.g., Sustainable Measures, Redefining Progress, US EPA, and North Central Regional Center for Rural Development) provide free or inexpensive training materials and guides for the indicator development process, including the involvement of stakeholders, integration of the indicator process with community goals, selection of candidate indicators, and review of the resulting indicators over time.

Suggested Indicators:

Since livability is a broad topic, categories are recomended for organizing community indicators. Categories also allow communities to help ensure that they are measuring all of the key aspects of livability. The categories used in developing the indicators for sustainability, which also seem to apply to livability, are:

• Categories associated with key issues such as education and air quality and,

• Categories associated with the SDI Framework. Developed by the SDI Group, the Framework organizes indicators into three major categories representing (1) long-term endowments and liabilities, (2) processes that increase or decrease these endowments, and (3) current results. These categories are then divided into subcategories for the economy, the environment, and society.