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The simplest connections are connections to family, friends and neighbours and we can then proceed on to the larger scale where we form connections through community organisations, links to government and the ability to form commercial organisations to create goods and services to satisfy the needs of the community. Finally, the remaining level of the pyramid is built capital which provides the physical infrastructure and supplies the needs that allow the other levels to flourish. It includes roads, transport, factory buildings, houses and basic necessities such as food and clothing together with luxury goods such as dishwashers, cars, telephones and computers.

Issues of privacy and individuality become important in this matter. However, there will still be a very large number of indicators, perhaps the majority, which relate to social and political issues that are difficult to capture by machine. In addition, if we do use measures we sometimes forego the richness of human culture and society and consequently lose something significant in terms of sustainable communities. Issues such as aesthetics and heritage can come into this category. How is it possible to measure these and capture their full meaning to a society?

The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically diminished. In practice this means the harvesting and manipulation of eco-systems that preserve productive capacity and diversity in order to husband the capacity of nature to reconcentrate and reconstruct waste in a way that maintains the productivity of the land and sea. There must be a fair and efficient use of resources with respect to meeting human needs. In practice this means that society's values should allow sufficient stability to achieve the other three conditions by doing more with less through a much more resource-efficient lifestyle in the wealthy sections of society.