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INDICATOR |
Residents' awareness of the Sustainable City Plan |
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STATUS |
Good |
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TREND |
Improving |
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DESCRIPTION |
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The city has a goal of assuring that community members of all ages understand the basic principles of sustainability and
use them to guide their decisions and actions - both personal and collective.
Toward this end, the city measures awareness of the Ecological Footprint, surveying
city residents to gauge their
understanding of the Footprint and their contribution to it. The target for this indicator is for 25% of the population to be
aware of the Ecological Footprint and understand their contribution to it by 2010.
Santa Monica Residents' survey also tracks
understanding of how each Sustainable City goal area is a component of a sustainable community and the extent to which
this affects their decisions. The target for this indicator is an upward trend. |
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PERFORMANCE SUMMARY |
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When the Sustainable City Plan Survey was conducted in 2003, only 5% of the respondents were aware of the Santa
Monica Ecological Footprint, leaving 95% of the respondents unaware of the Santa Monica Ecological Footprint. Awareness of the Sustainable City Plan is up. Twenty-five percent of those questioned in the 2005 Survey had heard of
the Santa Monica Sustainable City Plan, up from 17% in 2003 and 13% in 1998 indicating steady progress. |
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HIGHLIGHTS |
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● Between 2003 and 2005, there was a 47% increase in awareness of the Sustainable City Plan!
● Though our
Ecological Footprint has contracted slightly
in the last two years, the city's Footprint dramatically exceeds its square mileage. |
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ANALYSIS |
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One tool leveraged in pursuit of increased sustainable community awareness is the Ecological Footprint, a
measure of
humanity's use of nature. In particular, this tool measures
the area in acres of biologically productive land and water that must be used exclusively to produce all the resources that
the city’s residents consume, and to absorb all the wastes that they produce in one year. Although the footprint shrank
from 21.4 to 20.6 acres per capita between 1990 and 2000, it still exceeds the sustainably viable footprint of 4.6 acres per
person.
An effective Sustainable City Plan engage multiple stakeholders in the creation of a sustainable city. This requires that residents understand the components of the Sustainable City Plan so that they can contribute to its success. Detailed responses to this question in 2003 indicated 70% of respondents are concerned about Resource Conservation, indicators directed at decreasing consumption of resources; 83% were concerned with Environmental and Public Health which addresses limiting the contamination of water, soil and air. Interestingly, 60% of respondents felt Human Dignity, including the ability to meet basic needs such as shelter and healthcare, was most important. |
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WHAT CAN WE DO TO IMPROVE? |
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Continue to educate the public about the ecological footprint and the Sustainable City Plan. |
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DATA SOURCES |
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View source material in Excel:
CECP7_CommInvolvement.xls.
Email contact for data source inquires. |
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PRINTING TIPS
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Printing tips for MS Internet Explorer |
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LAST UPDATED
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August 2005 |
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CITATION |
www.smepd.org/scpr |
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