Sustainable communities are communities that are enduring, resilient and healthy. They use resources wisely, protect their natural environments, promote public health and respond nimbly to changes over time. They are places where people want to be, where they can go outside and connect with each other, where they can actively live, work, learn, play and thrive.

The core infrastructure of a community—its layout, road design, stormwater system, energy grid, and open space—can have dramatic impacts on the environment and quality of life. Creating sustainable communities requires integration of a wide range of disciplines—from developers and land use planners, civil engineers and transportation planners, city officials, home builders, marketers and residents. It requires the entire team to approach their roles in new ways and transform the development process.

CTG calls on its inter-disciplinary team, including engineers, planners and environmental professionals, and its experience on real-world projects in order to help project teams find the optimal set of solutions for sustainability within the context of market realities. In order to facilitate this process, we have developed the CTG Sustainable Communities Model™ (SCM). This model serves as an integration tool to help evaluate design decisions from a wide range of disciplines and scales to determine their environmental and economic impacts.

The SCM allows the team to see the linkages between systems, such as the embodied energy in water usage and the embodied water in energy usage, and to understand potential synergies and trade-offs. The model is applicable not only to residential communities but to campuses, corporations and cities.

• Modeling
• Design Guidelines
• Program Development
• Monitoring & Verification