by Brianna Crandall — November 17, 2010—The STAR Community Index, a national standard to create more sustainable, livable communities, recently marked an important milestone with the release of its Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles. The 81 goals and 10 guiding principles collectively define community-scale sustainability and reportedly set a national standard for local governments.
The STAR Community Index is being developed by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA (ICLEI USA) in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), National League of Cities (NLC), and Center for American Progress.
The goals give local governments and communities a much-needed vocabulary to more effectively strategize and focus their sustainability planning efforts, says ICLEI. They also serve as the foundation of the STAR Community Index—the forthcoming national rating system that will offer cities and counties a roadmap for creating healthy, inclusive, and prosperous communities.
The STAR Goals and Guiding Principles can serve as a resource to help local governments create or revise a sustainability plan; conduct a sustainability assessment; establish local sustainability priorities; and/or focus ongoing sustainability initiatives. The program’s goal is to provide a standardized, national, consensus-based framework of sustainability goals and measures covering everything from how to measure recycling rates to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Municipal staff can use the goals document as a framework in combination with ICLEI’s Five Milestones for Sustainability. By aligning local priorities with STAR’s framework now, a community will be primed to utilize the full STAR performance management system when it is released in early 2012, notes ICLEI.
