The vision of the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council says that by 2025 “the Los Angeles region has become a model of sustainable urban watershed management.” This vision is the conclusion of a long list of criteria of sustainability that were adopted in 1996 and reaffirmed in 2008 by the Board of Directors of the Watershed Council. You can read the complete vision statement on the Watershed Council’s website. It is a very ambitious vision.

Let’s set aside for a moment the deadline of 2025. Does sustainability even make sense for an urban region like Los Angeles? Are the criteria for sustainability achievable? And there is that deadline. I’m sure in 1996 it seemed comfortably far away, but the future is rushing towards us. No one knows what the world will be like in 2025, but we can imagine. I’ve read plenty of dystopias, thank you, and I would prefer to work towards utopia, even if I believe it to be unrealistic. I grew up watching Star Trek, afterall.

This blog, then, is a place to explore the idea of sustainability in an urban city – who, what, where, when, and especially how.