By:

Small towns of the 21st century are facing unprecedented challenges in attaining long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Alma, a small town of 9,000 in central Michigan, has suffered almost seventy years of economic and environmental practices gone wrong. Former home to an oil refinery, tons of oil and hazardous byproducts were dumped into the air, soil, groundwater and surface waters of the watershed. In addition, a neighboring chemical company systematically released the hazardous by-products of the flame retardant, PBB, and the infamous pesticide, DDT, resulting in one of the largest Superfund clean-ups in the country. While the pollution remains, the companies, as well as hundreds of jobs vital to the local economy, have long since fled and escaped liability. Even now, city leaders are still relying on unsustainable, inefficient, and outmoded methods of development from earlier eras to bring prosperity to the area. My research will assess innovative strategies which address how small, industrialized communities like Alma can remain competitive in the era of globalization without sacrificing their environment. Specifically, I will examine an approach known as eco-industrial parks (EIP), which bring sustainability to industrialization. EIPs, which have been tested internationally, are "industrial ecosystems" where businesses coordinate resource use to achieve collective economic, environmental, and social benefits. My research will evaluate European Union policies that are making the development of EIPs in towns similar to Alma possible as well as the feasibility of an EIP in Alma to serve as a model of sustainability to the multitude of towns in similar economic and environmental circumstances.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: Making Small Towns Economically Competitive and Environmentally Sustainable in the 21st Century