I was in Ann Arbor this weekend, and came across a new campaign there: Think Local First. It turns out that this is part of a larger campaign from the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies. Local economies are hugely important for connecting sustainability issues to actual quality of life--because local business shapes the local environment, because work shapes a big part of your life, and because the economy is an extension of nature. (Via Richard Layman, I see that BALLE is having their annual conference at the end of May--it would be great if someone from Springfield could go--I don't care who: someone from city planning, Downtown Springfield, Chamber of Commerce, anybody!)
One useful thing about bolstering the local economy is that, over time, you can push them to become more like an ecosystem, growing around the waste streams of other local businesses. (This is one of the themes of Bill McDonough's work, which is featured in Power Shift, showing Wednesday evening at the Lincoln Library, at 7:00.)