"What if communities around the world committed to development based on sound environmental practices and progressive social programs, to reduce waste and green house gases, improve air quality and public transit, conserve water and energy, increase green space, adopt environmentally sound planning and purchasing and support healthy food production with active public participation?" -Michael Bloomfield Executive Director, Harmony Foundation

An exciting transformation is underway in neighborhoods around the world. Citizens and governments are taking action in their cities and towns and across national boundaries to protect the environment, address poverty and other social issues, and improve the quality of life now and for the future. Communities are discovering that when residents, local governments, city building professionals and business work together, destructive patterns of development can be transformed into beneficial outcomes that provide prosperity that is ecologically and socially sustainable.

Today, 49% of the world's population, or some 3.6 billion people, live in cities. By 2030, the figure is expected to rise to 61%. Large urban settlements face an increasing number of problems: severe environmental degradation, pollution, water, energy and food shortages, solid waste accumulation, housing affordability and availability, disease and poverty.

Green Cities: a Guide to Sustainable Community Development, an official document of United Nation's World Environment Day 2005 and the San Francisco Urban Environmental Accords, is fourth in a series of Harmony Foundation profiles on specific issues. It was created to promote community development initiatives which are environmentally sound and socially just and to encourage public officials, municipal planners and community leaders to exercise visionary leadership and bring people together to take action which meets local needs while addressing regional, national and international objectives. Green Cities offers insights, information and practical actions that illuminate the path towards sustainable community development. It includes a thought-provoking foreword by Maurice Strong, a concise and thorough overview of sustainable community development, inspiring community success stories from around the world and invaluable resources and tools for establishing community priorities and taking local action. Green Cities, a collaboration with The Centre for Sustainable Community Development, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, encourages a new kind of leadership that understands that success depends on long-term thinking and the active participation of all citizens. It results from a Harmony partnership with the Earth Council Alliance.

"The Green Cities guide is an important and timely contribution to the efforts of Cities around the world to transform urban growth into economic prosperity, social justice and ecological stability." -Charles Kelly, Commissioner General, World Urban Forum 3, Vancouver 2006

An exciting transformation is underway in communities around the world. Citizens and their governments are taking action in their cities and towns to protect the environment, address poverty and other social issues, and improve the quality of life now and for the future. Communities are discovering that when residents, local governments and business work together, destructive patterns of development can be transformed into beneficial outcomes that provide prosperity that is ecologically and socially sustainable.

Harmony Foundation's Green Cities: a Guide to Sustainable Community Development offers insights and practical actions that illuminate the path towards sustainable community development. An official document of UN World Environment 2005, it includes a thought- provoking foreword by Maurice Strong, an overview of sustainable community development, inspiring community success stories from around the world.

The Green Cities book is a very useful publication for cities. Over 50% of the world's population now lives in cities and the next 3 billion are all going to be living in cities. These cities represent just 2% of the world's land mass but consume 75% of the world's resources. If we are to move towards a sustainable future, cities adopting the strategies in the Green Cities guide and implementing them are going to be crucial to Planet Earth's survival. I urge cities large and small to get a copy of Green Cities and get on the path towards sustainability.

The Green Cities guide is an important and timely contribution to the efforts of cities around the world to transform urban growth into economic prosperity, social justice and ecological stability.

Congratulations on writing the book, a superb effort and a marvelous outcome.

The future of our civilization will be set in the first two or three decades of this new millennium. Surely there could be no more exciting challenge to our generation or a more awesome responsibility. This remarkable guide to Green Cities is the product of the extensive insights and experience of the Harmony Foundation and their colleagues at the Centre for Sustainable Community Development. It is rich in practical ideas and inspiring examples of what must be done and what can be done in every community to set us on the path to sustainability. This guide will brightly illuminate the pathway to that future.

"It is vital to balance the needs of the environment, the economy and social equity to develop a way of living that can sustain our planet into future generations. Green Cities: a Guide for Sustainable Community Development made a tremendous contribution to the success of World Environment 2005 in San Francisco and this fabulous book, with its practical content and inspiring examples, is a must for anyone pursuing sustainable community development."

The intellectual content of Green Cities along with your unique format makes the book easy to read and locate practical information. Your book is a definitive resource which distinguishes itself as a source for knowledge and best practice examples of sustainable community development. As I read the book I realized the timeliness and applicability relating to the devastation from Hurricane Katrina.