Introduction to Sustainable Community Development

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Introduction to Sustainable Community Development
Joshua Farley CDAE GIEE
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What is Community?

• A group of people living in the same locality and
  under the same government?
• A group of people having common interests, a
  common affiliation?
• Society as a whole, the public?

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What are the spatial boundaries of community?

• Neighborhood, city, state, country?
• What about global issues?

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Community is context dependent

• Scale of community depends on scale of the issues
  were dealing with
• Climate change
• National defense
• Urban sprawl
• Noise
• Sense of kinship and scale

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What is development?

• What defines a developed country?
• Is Kerala developed?
• What do we want to develop?

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Human Development Index

• GNP/capita
• Education (enrollment)
• Literacy
• Life expectancy

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Max-Neefs Human Needs matrix

• Development as the satisfaction of human needs
• Subsistence, protection, affection,
  understanding, participation, recreation,
  creation, identity and freedom
• Having (things), being (qualities), doing
  (actions), interacting (settings)
• Needs are the same, satisfiers differ across
  cultures and time

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What is Sustainability?

• "development that meets the needs of the present
  without compromising the ability of future
  generations to meet their own needs. Brundtland
  Commission
• What needs to be sustained so that future
  generations can meet their needs?
• Strong vs. weak sustainability

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Overview

• How can we build communities that are
  ecologically, economically, socially, politically
  and culturally sustainable?
• What is our vision of a sustainable and desirable
  community?
• What policies are required?
• How do we measure success?
• Holistic, transdisciplinary approach

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Course Objectives

• Gain an understanding of the multi-dimensional
  nature of communities
• Learn methods that will help us understand and
  solve complex problems like community
  development
• Understand the role of institutions (from
  household to global) in building sustainable
  communities

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Course Objectives (cont.)

• Understand our role in promoting or hindering SCD
• Understand policies that promote or hinder SCD
• Contribute to SCD through a service learning
  project

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Course Format
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(No Transcript)
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Delivery Transdisciplinary approach

• Lectures from practitioners
• Lectures from faculty in other disciplines
• Synthesis lectures
• Discussions and exercises

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Assignments and Grading

• Service learning projects (30)
• Descriptions on Friday
• Reflections (25)
• See syllabus
• Participation (20)
• In class and discussion groups
• Editorials and letters to politicians (15)
• See syllabus
• Quizzes (10)
• Based on lectures and readings. Expect 100 if
  youve done them, 0 if you havent.

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WebCT and the paperless course

• Syllabus is electronic and dynamic. Please do not
  print.
• All assignments are posted on WebCT
• All assignments should be submitted via WebCT
• Acceptable formats are RTF or MSWord
• All comments/grades should be electronic

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WebCT Tools

• Syllabus
• You are responsible for reading and understanding
  the syllabus.
• E-mail
• E-mail sent to my UVM account MUST begin with
  CDAE 102 in subject line
• Project assignments
• Im figuring this one out
• Reflections
• Must be handed in on time. 25 decrease in grade
  each day late.

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some basic themes
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Systems thinking

• 4 capitals/ 4 Es
• Inherent complexity
• How do the pieces interact?
• Study of a rapidly evolving system
• What are the feedback loops driving system
  evolution?

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Transdisciplinarity

• In the university there are disciplines, in the
  real world there are problems
• Communication and understanding across
  disciplines is essential
• Communication with sectors outside of academia is
  essential

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Academic Autism

• What is Autism? A disorder characterized by
• abnormal subjectivity
• marked deficits in communication and social
  interaction
• marked withdrawal from reality
• abnormal behavior, such as excessive attachment
  to certain objects

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Objective truth seeking vs. action oriented
research

• Traditional role is neutral scientist, unbiased
  objective research
• Sustainability science demands solutions now. We
  need to do research that matters and we need to
  communicate and apply its results.

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Focus on Synthesis

• Communication across disciplines
• Integrative Methodologies
• Systems thinking and modeling
• Multi-criteria Analysis
• Policy implications

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and Communication

• Communicate to those who act on information
• Format appropriate to goal