Understanding Place

This chapter explains how sustainable community development in locations around the world has generated a parallel list of best practices that might offer prototypes for use in other places. The award‐winning Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, Nevada, is an example of what can result when a design focus shifts from preserving to partnering. The preserve is a unique natural area located in the historic heart of Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas residents come to the preserve to learn how to incorporate water conservation and sustainable practices into their daily lives. Living systems are sustained by a host of interactions among diverse forces. Places, for example, are undergirded by a slowly shifting geological substrate of rocks, soils, and the spaces between them. Human communities in and near the Rioplex have themselves responded to the pulses of change in conserving and renewing ways. They have formed stabilizing social networks to allow their cultures and livelihoods to thrive rather than be swept away in periods of war, human migration, and isolation.