In 2001, Jon Hawkes, a cultural analyst and one of Australia’s leading commentators on cultural policy, wrote The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning. His book incorporates four interlinked dimensions: environmental responsibility, economic health, social equity, and cultural vitality. Hawkes addresses the need for a cultural perspective in public planning and policy by proposing practical measures for integration. In order for public planning to be more effective, Hawkes argues that government must develop a framework that evaluates the cultural impacts of environmental, economic, and social decisions and plans currently being implemented in cities and communities.

His four-pillar model recognizes that a community’s vitality and quality of life is closely related to the vitality and quality of its cultural engagement, expression, dialogue, and celebration. This model further demonstrates that the contribution of culture to building lively cities and communities where people want to live, work, and visit plays a major role in supporting social and economic health.

The key to cultural sustainability is fostering partnerships, exchange, and respect between different streams of government, business, and arts organizations. Culture as the fourth pillar promotes these partnerships and is quickly gaining currency in policy and planning initiatives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

Source: Catherine Runnalls, 2006, MA thesis for Royal Rhodes University,
adapted from Hawkes, 2001 and others

New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage created a well-being model that includes cultural, environmental, social, and economic dimensions. The model was created in response to Local Government Act 2002 (Section 10), which states that local government is responsible for promoting “the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.” Through this model, the Ministry emphasizes the necessity for councils to deal with all four types of well-being in order to achieve sustainable development.

Similar to the other models, this one sees the different forms of well-being as interconnected. Overall well-being, which it places at the centre, is enhanced when all four areas are given equal weight, are interdependent, and are able to move efficiently around the centre.

Source: New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage,
Cultural well-being and local government, Report 1, 2006

Nathan Cardinal and Emilie Adin’s An urban Aboriginal life: The 2005 indicators report on the quality of life of Aboriginal people in the Greater Vancouver region uses the medicine wheel as a framework to determine categories and indicators for exploring and documenting the state of Aboriginal life in and around Vancouver.

The medicine wheel depicts four traditional directions: north (environmental), south (social), west (economic), and east (cultural). The east represents culture and family because in Aboriginal tradition beginnings start in the east, which is where the sun rises and a new dawn begins.

Four key segments of Aboriginal society—male, female, children and youth, and adults and elders—crosscut the four elements. Each of these segments is considered to be critical to give context to the Aboriginal community’s overall well-being. Cardinal and Adin explain that a holistic and flexible planning and development process surrounds the medicine wheel, guiding the framework’s development and maintenance.

Source: Nathan Cardinal & Emilie Adin’s An urban Aboriginal life: The 2005 indicators report on the quality of life of Aboriginal people in the Greater Vancouver region, Centre for Native Policy and Research