Originally Posted by
Robert Foster
Sustainable Community Roundtable Report (South Puget Sound)
"In a sustainable community, resource consumption is balanced by resources assimilated by the ecosystem. The sustainability of a community is largely determined by the web of resources providing its food, fiber, water, and energy needs and by the ability of natural systems to process its wastes. A community is unsustainable if it consumes resources faster than they can be renewed, produces more wastes than natural systems can process or relies upon distant sources for its basic needs."
I don't think this is a usable definition. Cities, particularly cities in anything resembling modern society, simply cannot exist without relying on "distant sources" for basic needs like food. A city, given current technology, can't produce enough food to feed it's population. Food must be imported. That's not unique to modern cities, either. Cities in general, at any level of technology, have to import their food.