Theses and Dissertations Collection

Sustainable development has become both a key policy objective for community development agenda and a significant public matter. Coherent policy development and productive public debates are, however, both threatened by the fact that the concept of sustainability is used with widely differing measures. Based on a review of related literature and primary fieldwork in settings of organizational literature, a framework linking three domains is presented as a tool to foster success and measure regarding normative conceptions of sustainable development in community settings. This paper identifies elements central to perceptions of what constitutes ‘successful’ measure of community sustainable development. Key domains of integration are proposed related to three bottom lines: Economic, Social, and Environmental. This analysis introduces a conceptual framework and model as a measure for community sustainability drawing from the triple bottom line (TBL) accounting framework or theory which recommends companies to commit giving the same weight of focus to social and environmental concerns the same way they do on profits by focusing on three bottom lines representing, People, Profit, and Planet as a whole instead of focusing on Profits alone. Results indicate a significant presence of community cohesion with residents giving equal consideration to all three bottom lines as a measure of community quality.