“Opportunity for all” but not “equality of opportunity”
In my last post, I talked about the need for communities to embrace a culture of opportunity for all. However, I don’t want that to be misconstrued as support for equality of opportunity, because they are two fundamentally different ideas.
Not convinced? Let’s work through it.
Continue reading “The Quixotic Dream of Egalitarian Opportunity”
The dissolution of the American Dream is everyone’s concern.
“It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
The American Dream sounds a lot like what social sustainability should look like, at least intuitively. When James Truslow Adams first introduced the term in his 1931 book The Epic of America, the American Dream was a reality in which “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement.”
Potential. Achievement. Opportunity. For all. These are what Adams saw as major tenets upon which a society should be built.
Why has social sustainability been treated like the neglected stepchild of the three pillars of sustainable development?
Sustainable development has become the gold standard for policy-making around the world as awareness has grown of the inability to continue along the traditional development path taken generations before us. There is a popular analogy for sustainable development as a three-legged stool, with environmental, economic, and social factors working together to keep the stool stable. However, as it has been deployed over the past three decades, the three legs have not been developed evenly and, thus, the stool is not as even and effective as it was intended to be. Social sustainability has not been given the same attention and implementation as its counterparts, and that has held back sustainable development around the world from reaching its maximum potential.
Why, then, has social sustainability been treated like the neglected stepchild of the three?
Nexus Point: Social Sustainability and Community Economic Development 