Mayor A C Wharton conceived of Sustainable Shelby: A Future of Choice, Not Chance as a process to develop a sustainability agenda that is both philosophical and practical. The outcome of this four-month process is an agenda that can be internalized within the public sector but that also becomes a shared vision for the private sector as well.
On March 7, 2008, Mayor A C Wharton held a kick off meeting for Sustainable Shelby at the Memphis Botanical Gardens. The keynote speaker was Mr. Joe Cartwright. He spoke on the Green Dividend. Click the link to review his PowerPoint presentation Memphis Green Dividend.
Shortly after taking office, Mayor Wharton signed an executive order creating the “Shelby County Alliance for Equitable Growth,” which brought together a cross-section of people to discuss smart growth strategies. It was the first community-wide summit held in our region to address ways to address the interlocking problems of suburban sprawl and urban deterioration.
Sustainable Shelby: A Future of Choice, Not Chance is the logical extension of that focus and arms our community with a clear agenda on which to build the future. For purposes of the Sustainable Shelby initiative, we will use the definition adopted by the State of Oregon:
"Sustainability means using, developing, and protecting resources at a rate and in a manner that enables people to meet their current needs and also provides that future generations can meet their own needs. Sustainability requires simultaneously meeting environmental, economic, and community needs."
That’s why for Sustainable Shelby, we imagine three overlapping circles — one represents economic needs, one represents environmental needs and one represents community social needs. The area where the three circles overlap is the area of sustainability, the area of livability—the area where all the threads of quality of life come together and represent the aspirations of our community.
That is the purpose of Sustainable Shelby, which will develop a broad agenda by mid-June, and it will be backed up with an implementation plan developed by the professional planners of Memphis and Shelby County.