One Region, Two Environments

When Faith And The City invited me to write a guest column on the physical and social environments, I welcomed the opportunity. These two environments are closely linked and both are important issues for the Atlanta metropolitan region.

When we hear the word "environment," most of us think about the natural, or "physical," environment – the mountains, farmlands, and coast, for example. But, we also live in a social environment – our human society. This social environment exists within the larger natural environment and in an interdependent relationship with it.

Similarly, when we hear the word "pollution," it is usually in the context of the natural environment – pollution of air, water, and land, for example. We are reminded of topics like toxic waste, global warming, and endangered species. But, pollution is also a problem in our social environment. In the Atlanta region and nationwide, our social environment – while healthier in many ways than others around the world – is often polluted. Much the way toxic waste pollutes the land, problems like poverty, crime, unemployment, ignorance, and hate can pollute our communities.

So, there are two environments that we live in and two that we pollute. They are intertwined in many ways that we clearly recognize today and, I suspect, in additional ways that we will discover in years to come. For example, we know that economic demand, a factor in the social environment, is driving the depletion of rain forests in the Amazon region. The result of economic demand, in this case, potentially impacts the global physical environment.

Of course, social conditions closer to home also affect our natural environment. Consider, for example, how concerns over racial tension, public education, and crime can lead people to relocate from inside city limits to the outer edges of a metropolitan area. When such movement creates "sprawl" – a significant issue in our greater Atlanta community today – the result is increased traffic congestion. A byproduct of such traffic, emissions from the now 2.8 million vehicles in our metro area pollute the air we breathe, from city center to suburban subdivisions. The issue comes full circle back to the social environment when you consider that heavy traffic and long commutes can also contribute to health problems and greater stress.

Although this example is useful, it may tend to oversimplify the issue. In fact, there are many causes of pollution in the physical and social environments. However, this example reminds us that we often pollute both environments without fully recognizing the consequences or understanding that each has an impact on the other.

It also reminds us that our communities are linked – from the city of Atlanta to the counties of Barrow, Pickens, Spalding, and Carroll – along with communities in between and beyond. We are interconnected through the natural environment that we all share – by the air, water, and land. And we are intertwined through the social environment that we share – by our regional economy and our citizens who commute daily across jurisdictional boundaries.

We should be linked too, I believe, by the realization that we are one community – that, just as we need regional cooperation in protecting the physical environment, we must also cooperate across the jurisdictional boundaries of our towns, cities, and counties to address our social environment. Only by doing so can we meet the array of challenges and opportunities that confront us all, ensure that our region continues to thrive, and enhance the common good for our larger regional community and the smaller communities that it embraces.