Publications

The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities' publications contain information to guide readers along the path to Bay Area sustainability.

• Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area
• Regional Livability Footprint/Smart Growth Strategy
• Sustainable Indicators
• Faces of Sustainability - case studies

Sustainable Indicators

The report, Bay Area Indicators: Measuring Progress Toward Sustainability provides valuable data about the sustainability of the Bay Area. It provides information on trends that affect the region's prosperity and health so that stakeholders can better understand how their decisions will positively or negatively influence these trends. These indicators will be used to measure the current status and gauge progress (or lack thereof) toward a more sustainable future in the Bay Area.

Background: The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities (Bay Area Alliance) and the Northern California Council for the Community (NCCC), commissioned by the United Way of the Bay Area, in collaboration with the Bay Area Partnership, jointly developed, gathered data and created a repository of data. The Bay Area Indicators: Measuring Progress Toward Sustainability is a key companion document to the Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area (Compact) and an integral component of the overall implementation strategy of the Bay Area Alliance. Organized by Commitment in the Compact, the set of broad indicators in this report was developed in a multi-stakeholder collaborative process by the Indicators Working Group, adopted by the Bay Area Alliance in 2000, and published in the Draft Compact. These indicators will be used to measure the current status and gauge progress (or lack thereof) toward a more sustainable future.

This inaugural indicators report was revised in May 2004 to add the two indicators which, for lack of funding, were omitted from the January 2003 version. These two indicators are the Genuine Progress Indicator (page 14) and the Ecological Footprint (page 45), and were developed by Redefining Progress. For additional community data, visit United Way of Bay Area's Data Central an online, publicly-accessible indicators data base for the Bay Area.

Report funders:

• Columbia Foundation
• Ford Foundation
• The James Irvine Foundation
• Regional Stewardship Fund of the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley (supported by the Bank of America)
• San Francisco Foundation
• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation