The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide - Democrats Against UN ...

The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide
tendency to focus on symptomatic conditions within the community, such as levels of air pollution or public health conditions. These
methodologies do not necessarily provide insight into the systemic issues that underlie and reproduce problem conditions. Planning
efforts aimed at long-term solutions and sustainability must somehow analyze and address the systemic aspects of problems.
Sustainable development planning, therefore, should provide a framework for stakeholders to identify and analyze systemic
problems. This framework can be referred to as “systems analysis.”
Systems analysis provides insight into the functioning of the systems upon which services depend. It does so by focusing on the
interdependent nature of the natural, built, social, and economic systems that support a community or a particular service system. For
example, a municipality that wishes to sustain its water supply will require more than simple baseline data about water levels and
water quality in a reservoir. It must understand the complex functioning of the entire watershed system, including such things as the
function of forests and wetlands in the system, and the impacts of irrigation, land prices, and even external terms of trade upon the
watershed. By shifting the focus of assessment to the understanding of systems that are being developed or changed, systems
analysis helps planners address the long-term ability of a community to meet its needs.
Methods: Technical versus Participant Assessment
Technical assessment methods for systems analysis are widely used today in the fields of industrial and civil engineering, the
biological sciences, and in management science. The fields of urban studies and planning have also made limited use of these
methods. Case #8 describes how the City of Gothenburg, Sweden, is beginning to use technical assessment methods for systems
analysis in its local environmental programs.
Systems analysis is increasingly being used to study the sources, uses, and flows of natural resources in cities, as illustrated in Figure
10. Figure 10 depicts the “energy system” for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland, including the sources and quantities of
different fuels, how they are processed and used, and the efficiency of their use. The total efficiency of the metropolitan energy
system—including electricity generation, heating,
FIGURE 10 MATERIALS FLOW ANALYSIS Understanding the Energy Systems of Metropolitan Helsinki and
Metropolitan Toronto (1988)
http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/448-2/ (52 of 180)18/10/2010 12:47:23 AM