The concept of equity is hardly a new thing. In fact, it dates to ancient Greece and the works of Plato, among others.  And the vast majority of us recognize its value to society.  But through centuries of developing civilizations, we still haven’t achieved a reasonable level of it. In fact, we now have a small portion of our population actively trying to remove it from…well, everything. That’s a short-sighted, egocentric, and even dangerous worldview that is pulling apart deep connective tissue in society.

When it comes to equity in our built environment, we haven’t fared any better.  It took until 1990 for us to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, providing some guidelines to address the inequity of access, but we’ve done nothing since then to broaden or further that cause. This is not a sustainable path. 

Lots of questions come to mind, but let’s focus on just a couple:

“What is equity’s role in a thriving, sustainable society?”

“Can addressing equity through the built environment create more sustainable projects?   

UPDATING WHAT SUSTAINABILITY SHOULD MEAN

As sustainability has worked its way into mainstream consciousness and practice, outside forces and general misinterpretation have managed to bend, mutate, and dilute the core meaning.  We’ve lost our understanding not only of what true sustainability is, but our connection to why it matters. And that’s primarily due to the challenge of sorting an increasingly complex and complicated world. As problems got more difficult, we broke them into bite-sized pieces and, in the process, lost our comprehension of the big picture.

We are part of multiple interconnected living systems—nature—that require a holistic understanding to fully define what it is we are trying to sustain and how we can do that.

No system is entirely independent. Each system can influence others—positively or negatively—depending on the broader context. To sustain life in those systems, we must treat them as complete entities and be mindful of the connectivity that influences and feeds that shared life. It’s not just about achieving success in one area to the detriment of others but about finding the balance that maintains the whole—touching financial, social, environmental, and human factors to evolve thriving systems that support all life.

Part of the reason equity is not immediately associated with sustainability is that we haven’t locked in the holistic view of what it takes to sustain any living system. The free market drives an often singular focus on financial return on investment (ROI) as the only prize, and we’ve come to accept that for someone to win, someone else must lose. But in that equation, other components of the larger system lose, too, as our actions unbalance the greater context.

When you think about ROI from a whole-systems perspective, you necessarily redistribute things to balance the whole—rather than pursuing financial success at the expense of social balance and other factors.  If you consistently pursue one outcome over balancing multiple outcomes, it eventually leads to revolutions (see all of human history).

Likewise, pursuing human success at the expense of the environment eventually leads to climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the breakdown of ecosystems … all of which threaten human existence. To achieve balance, the Whole seeks equity and  reciprocal relationships that are mutually beneficial. This doesn’t mean every facet is equal, it means their relationships are such that the system can thrive over the long term.  That’s real sustainability.

Assuming you’re still with me, let’s go back to the original premise—that designing for equity can lead to more sustainable projects. I believe equity is an essential component of sustainability, and to achieve it, we must be willing to “see the whole” and reconnect with the larger systems, such as nature.  Then, our criteria for sustainable design shifts to include consideration for more than just the environmental ROI. To be truly sustainable, our projects must address human, financial, social, and environmental factors in an equitable way that helps maintain the balance our systems need to thrive.

CREATING VALUE FOR THE LONG TERM

I submit that this perspective also expands the definition of equity, which should also address all four of those factors. And while human equity has become an urgent issue of late, we can’t “fix” that without considering the impact on those other facets. But, in each category, we can act more intentionally with that balance in mind.  Thinking about your project through an equity lens can lead you to choices that contribute to that balance, and you can apply it almost anywhere. Some of the questions you might find it necessary to ask could include:

• Are you creating equitable access for/in the neighborhood and community you and the project are a part of? 
  
• Are you reducing (or eliminating) reliance on energy sources that are detrimental to the whole?
  
• Does your project require an inequitable number of natural resources, materials, or other components that others will no longer be able to access?  Can you rethink things from a whole systems perspective and reduce those requirements, or find ways to continue to provide access to others?
  
• Are you creating an imbalance that others must pay for in some way?  Can you reconcile that inequity?

This is not an easy road. However, the easy road has brought us to a precipice of unraveling that we must attend to or suffer significant consequences. But I believe human ingenuity, creativity, and collaboration can deliver the solutions we need, provided we can reframe the problem with better perspective and equity built into our intentions. If we begin with those considerations—applied to the whole—we can make every project more sustainable: contributing to the larger system, supported by that system, and delivering a new level of ROI not just for building owners but also for occupants, the surrounding community, and the ecosystems they inhabit.