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Green Action: Creating Sustainable Communities - Mar 2010
SYLLABUS: GREEN ACTION: CREATING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
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P2PU.org
Spring 2010
John A. Kinch, Ph.D.
GREEN ACTION: CREATING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
“There is no single template for a sustainable community.”
Daniel Sitarz, Sustainable America: America’s Environment, Economy and Society in the 21st Century
Course Description
How sustainable is your community? How sustainable does it have the potential to be?
This course is going to get at the principles and practices that are making communities everywhere more sustainable. Sustainability is guiding and empowering communities to develop and evolve in ways that are more just, transparent, healthier and more environmentally responsible.
Many communities, such as Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, are, in fact, defining their identities by how sustainable they are today, and aspire to be. Green is good! But what exactly is this new green—sustainability—and how do you harness it to improve the quality of (all) life where you live?
This course has two main objectives: 1) To examine and understand sustainability as a visioning and organizing principle for communities. 2) To apply this knowledge toward developing the beginnings of a sustainability plan for our own communities (defined however you wish: neighborhood, group, work, school, city, town, region).
Learning exercises in this course will build toward these plans. We’ll work collaboratively and individually and the final project can be in whatever communications medium you prefer: written, graphic, video, audio, digital, a mix.
We, ourselves, will come together as a community virtually. A course wiki, video conferencing and other digital means will connect and engage us.
Areas of sustainability we will cover are: Foundations and Origins; Grassroots and Government; Greening of Business; Education; Your Community; Greenwashing and Other Perils.
Syllabus
FOUNDATIONS AND ORIGINS (Week 1)
Our first week looks at the foundations and origins of the concept of sustainability—its intellectual, philosophical, scientific, historical and social movement roots. One such origin comes from the international environmentalism and humanitarian relief arena of the last two decades. But there are others sources of sustainability as well.
Listed are some of the foundations and origins. There are others. Please take a look (and give a listen) to as many of these resources as you can.
Assignment: Is there an aspect of sustainability that especially appeals to you? Why? Please write a response and post to our blog (500 words or so).
UN Millennium Development Goals
Gurus: Aldo Leopold, Lester Brown, Paul Hawken, William McDonough, Jane Jacobs
GRASSROOTS AND GOVERNMENT (Week 2)
Two of the levers for change in societies are grassroots movements and governments. Sometimes the two are in conflict; sometimes they are symbiotic. At the heart of this aspect of sustainability is the concept of equity, or, equality: environmental, social and economic.
Assignment: Take a position on this question: Where’s the best answer lie for creating sustainable communities: with grassroots activism or local/regional/state/national/international governments—or something in between? Blog 500 words.
Grand Rapids Green Master Plan
Local Governments for Sustainability
West Michigan Strategic Alliance
Good Governance and Sustainability
GREENING OF BUSINESS (Week 3)
The dominant economic model of the last several hundred years in the Western world, and increasingly today in the developing world, has been natural resource utilization to drive economic growth. Put less diplomatically, we have exploited nature for human gain. New thinkers and leaders in environmental and business circles are challenging this paradigm. Among the concepts to emerge from this trend is the “the triple bottom line.”
Assignment: Please find an example of a green business in your community—one that has a website. Analyze its website’s messages, images, graphics and offer a critique as to how “green” you think it really is. Your critique can be in any output: written, graphic, audio, video, presentation software, etc.
Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
Cradle to Cradle: Steelcase and Herman Miller
EDUCATION (Week 4)
Heard about the new “Sustainability Major” being offered at your local college or university? Just what does a sustainability major do for a career? Plenty. Higher education is becoming more green, both on campus, and with its outputs—graduates.
Assignment: Take a look at some institutions of higher education and see what they’re doing around sustainability. Anything grab you as especially innovative? Important? Any interest in the curricula or programs that are greening campuses across the nation? Blog.
Grand Valley State University’s Sustainable Community Development Initiative
Sustainability in Higher Education
YOUR COMMUNITY (Week 5)
Maybe your community is already sustainable or well on its way. Maybe you need to get green in a big way. Whatever your circumstance, those communities that are already becoming more sustainable have a wealth of information and best practices to share with others. Creating a sustainable community is a complex undertaking and draws upon diverse groups and individuals to make the ideal a reality.
Assignment: For this section, take a look at these resources, and others in your community, and then decide on the Top Sustainable Things your community needs to do or continue doing. Then do a “gap analysis” of these—that is to say, identify where there are gaps in information, resources, people that are preventing the job from getting done.
Feel free to tackle these in greater depth by coming up with a strategy (a plan, an outline) of how you might help make this aspect of your community more sustainable.
To use myself as an example, I’ve become interested and am beginning to get more involved with Grand Rapids Whitewater—a group that wants to return the river that runs through downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, into its more natural state. This has many benefits, including river and aquatic species health, recreation, aesthetics, tourism and so forth.
Maybe there’s a group in your community that you can identify and volunteer to help as well.
Sustainable Communities Network
Charrettes, Transparency, Planning
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Community Sustainability Partnership
GREENWASHING AND RELATED PERILS (Week 6)
. . . Or, “The-Five-Easy-Things-You-Can-Do-at-Home-to-Save-the-Planet Fallacy.”
These days, it seems everybody wants to be greener—individuals, corporations, communities, countries. Some are making legitimate progress toward this laudable goal. Others may just be posers.
Has “sustainability” already become so overused and misappropriated that it has lost its meaning and significance? Does acting local at the community level matter if the global community isn’t doing the same?
Assignment: Make your world a little greener.
Is Wal-mart green? Fast Company, Inhabit.com, Thomas Freidman
Does cap and trade work? Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Center For American Progress
