A Sustainable Train of Thought

I’ve been meaning to document my thesis work, but other matters have been more pressing. Eventually I will create that site, but in the meantime I thought it might be nice to pick out what I consider some highlights from my thesis explorations and present them in my blog. You know, maybe get some people to read them and hopefully comment on them…but more importantly, it would be nice to advance my theories as my own and claim ownership of them by documenting them. With the rate of change we’ve been seeing in the world lately, reality has been steadily overtaking my thesis work, and I’d prefer to say “here’s something cool I thought of” before someone goes out and does it, rather than vice versa.

In the spirit of drawing this process out as long as possible (and so I don’t have to think of new content all the time), I’ll post a section every few days and perhaps add a little commentary to expand on the concepts or talk about any shifts in thinking I might have had over the year.

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

My thesis year at IDII was spent investigating how individuals could make a difference in such a large issue as sustainability. On the one hand we have initiatives to encourage individuals to recycle or carpool. On the other hand in the realm of nation states we have the Kyoto Protocol. A huge gulf separates the two extremes of action. And yet, after reading several compelling books (The Ecology of Commerce and Collapse, among others), and feeling an overwhelming urge to do something, I found myself lacking for direction. The Kyoto Protocol is way beyond my influence, and I already did things like recycling. I wanted to do something more, but what?

In the course of my research, I found that many people felt the same way. They read the same books, had the same realizations, and were full of energy and enthusiasm, yet they found (as did I) that there was no outlet for them. There was no way for them to make meaningful contributions to sustainability.

With this realization, I saw some opportunity to act.

Service design seemed like the best way to go for a couple of reasons: it offers opportunities for involving people in processes and it can promote dematerialization—while working on a thesis about sustainability, it seemed hypocritical to create yet another fancy widget.

My first step in the thesis process was to get my bearings within the land of sustainability and develop some approach vectors which might indicate more promising areas of investigation and development.

First was the realization that sustainability is a murky word because it is a quality, not a thing. You can’t point to sustainability and say “Aha, there it is!” Nor can you pin sustainability down to a specific checklist, because its qualities vary depending on the specific situation. For example, the concept of a “sustainable home” differs between the Sahara and the Arctic: an igloo wouldn’t last two minutes in the Sahara.

By the end of my thesis process, I grew incredibly tired of the word sustainability. While it encompasses a lot of concepts, its murky generality renders it almost a nonsense word. You can talk about sustainability this and sustainability that and in the end have said not much of anything. I also found its use and abuse extremely frustrating. A variety of industries seem to have found sustainability the new buzzword: the sustainable chair, the sustainable this, the sustainable that. Great, it’s sustainable, but what exactly are you doing? Sustainability necessarily encompasses a huge amount of complexity, and to think that “sustainable” can be bestowed upon an object because it’s made from recycled soda bottles is a violent misconception (if I can use that phrase). As Cradle to Cradle points out, that’s merely down-cycling material, not re-envisioning and re-making how we produce, consume, renew, or dispose of things. How can a light-bulb be “more sustainable” when its electricity comes from a coal-fired power plant?

I was struck by the need for massive change (to use Bruce Mau’s terminology), perhaps what one might even call a revolution. I saw a need for revolutionary thought and action, and yet all I saw were incremental, step-wise iterations of existing products, services, and systems. And this struck me as bizarre, because once you see the incredible amount of opportunity for innovation, with the attendant intellectual property, patents, royalties, and so forth, you’d think that companies would be stumbling over each other to innovate, to become leaders in their fields.

My future posts will explore this situation and where I think some of the solutions lie.

In Earth is Too Crowded for Utopia, an article on the BBC’s website, Chris Rapley argues that the one issue related to sustainability which nobody wants to discuss is that of population.

I completely agree.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how small the footprint of an individual human is if that footprint is multiplied six billion times. This is related to the point that Jared Diamond raises in Collapse, that people in the Third World are not going to be very happy when they realize that the First World living standards promised to them will never materialize. (It’s just reality, no hard feelings…) It’s not about wanting and having: it’s about physics.

And even if we get to the point where Amory Lovins’ Hypercar concept becomes reality and our objects become hyper-efficient in their use of materials, we’re still dealing with a growing population with an insatiable appetite for the simple things like food and clothing, not to mention the finer things like televisions and cars.

It’s of no small consequence, then, that the US just “celebrated” its 300 millionth citizen. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the US population has grown 50 percent in the last 40 years, and is poised to reach 400 million by 2040.

Clearly, something needs to change. We can start by recognizing that everything is connected, that the air we breath is also used to power combustion engines. That the water we drink is mixed with laundry detergent. That every time we turn a light on, we contribute to CO~2~ emissions.

But those are simple questions and simple connections. They are not morally fraught. By contrast, issues such as birth control in the US can be highly controversial and are extremely polarized. Most of the time it seems like these “controversial” issues are deadlocked and that they’ll exist in such a state till the end of time. Kind of like how the problems with Social Security will go away if we don’t think too hard about them.

Issues such as population growth will require lengthy rational discussion to resolve. The question is how long we can go on pretending that rising population figures don’t matter. Perhaps it is better to begin to acknowledge and discuss these problems before we reach the point where such civilized activities are no longer possible.

Pseudo live-blogging of a presentation by Maurice Cox at the GSD.

You can complain about the building codes, or you can get involved and change them…

Premise: there are some urgent matters, and some issues which can be weeded out which are not urgent. What you do has incredible relevancy when applied to matters which are truly urgent.

Two cases: one where you have the authority to make changes, and one where you’re leading, but nobody has given you the authority.

Maurice Cox grew up in Brooklyn, saw the decline and disinvestment within the community as it turned into a low-income neighborhood, and this influenced him to explore what influenced these changes and he as an architect could do to reverse this trend.

Thomas Jefferson equated design with happiness.

How to develop an architecture of trust when the public understands the implications of the tools architecture uses—typically planning and architecture are instruments of power. (discussed while showing how the downtown of Charlottesville, VA was razed and rebuilt with the “downtown of business” in mind.)

Using design for its transformative power. Thinking about the risks involved (political and otherwise) related to change.

Charlottesville: why grab adjoining tax base when you can create your own. Look at the entire city as an organism, a whole. Finding a way to strategically increase density.

Design thinking is applicable to problems which may seem political or social.

After defeating plans for a maximum security prison near their town, the community came together and leveraged their capacity for action and design to redevelop and rebuild their own community.

The development process of six years was one of matching their values to reality. Within the community, learning the tools and developing the capacity for transformation—there must be a sense of urgency behind it.

Richmond, VA – a ten-year process of change, zero-displacement, mixed incomes. Involves over 15 different stakeholders.

New Orleans, LA – How to respond to the grass-roots, citizens desire to rebuild.

The Global Green Competition – rebuilding with a focus on green, sustainable designs. How to integrate services (childcare), hydroponics on the roof, and solar panels and louvers.

Moss Point – reached out to Maurice Cox to learn more about the redevelopment process. Engaging in a door-to-door survey to understand the concern of the community prior to resolving problems and designing.

Biloxi, Mississippi – FEMA’s new Flood Elevations and its impact on architecture. (Structures must be 12 feet above flood level—leads to houses on stilts with many stairs.) Design constraints…so how do you challenge those constraints? Through a design fair (sponsored by Architecture for Humanity), architecture models presented to the community and engaged in a dialog with the designers. They began to express preferences and make choices.

(Unfortunately, several slides were missing from his presentation due to some problems with Powerpoint)

QA Session: need to pace the changes at a rate people can absorb them.

Visual communication skills are the most effective tools in the process.