Sustainable development initiatives are analyzed as local urban community responses to globalizing problems. The 1962 Seattle "Century 21 Worlds Fair" and the 1992 United Nations Rio "Agenda 21" are reviewed. "Local urban communities" are studied: a city block, a neighborhood, and a city district, in Berlin and in Seattle. What are these communities capable of achieving with "local resources"? To what extent are they dependent on external conditions and city, national, and international level programs? The roles of civil society and the historical evolution and accumulation of local resources...