Sustainable [Urban] Ecologies – Strategic [Urban] Ecologies, Engineering, and Decision-Making

GW Food Policy Leadership Institute Launch, Fall 2017!

seedJuly 6, 2017Leave a comment

Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, the Executive Director of Sustainability at George Washington, has announced the new GW Food Policy Leadership Institute! Click here to apply and learn more.

GW Food Institute Program Basics. Click here to apply.

Full text of her email blast is reproduced below:

Dear friends,

I have spent many years mentoring promising young people in the fields of sustainability and farm and food policy. Watching them ascend to top positions in government, business and the nonprofit sector and become agents of change has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my career.

The moment has come to supercharge this work. We know there is a booming interest in agriculture among young people; there are also the complex challenges of climate change, persistent inequities in the food system, and so many others. They require creative solutions, and government must play a role. It is time to throw our collective weight behind building a bench of diverse new leaders who can carry the work, and the world, forward.

I’m excited to announce the launch of a new Food Policy Leadership Institutethat will do just that. Drawing on a dream-team faculty with more than two centuries of practical policy experience between them, the Institute will transfer their collective knowledge to the next generation of food policy leaders, help those up-and-coming leaders understand the current policy landscape and how it came to be, and cultivate the skills needed to affect real policy change. The mentoring relationships and networks that participants will build will serve them throughout their careers.

Program recruits will be passionate and diverse individuals from communities large and small, both rural and urban. They will be practitioners in local, state or federal government; emerging leaders in business, philanthropy or nonprofits; or graduate students looking for deep and practical training in food policy. The curriculum will be rigorous and skills-based. Upon completion, participants will have gained not just a better understanding of the food policy landscape and the tools to impact it, but, I hope, a renewed sense of the value of civic engagement. That’s something we need now more than ever.

The first class will be admitted for this September. Please help me get the word out and find young leaders ready for this challenge.

Best,

Kathleen Merrigan, Ph.D.
Director, GW Food Institute

#TWIST 23 June 2017: Inclusive Urbanism

seedJune 22, 2017Leave a comment

The newly opened pagoda in Patterson Park, Baltimore, MD, USA. By Phil! Gold

This week, I want to talk briefly about a topic that is not infrastructure, per se, but increasingly intertwines infrastructure, justice, affordability, class, and economic growth--Incusive Urbanism.

Like many terms, inclusive urbanism is dangerously close to the "destined to become meaningless" space occupied by "sustainability" and "resilience." Just like those terms, though, inclusive urbanism saves you a paragraph each time you use it in conversation after the first time. When folks say inclusive urbanism, what they generally intend is that we want to revitalize our cities, but do so in such a way that current and long-term residents have an opportunity to benefit from the revitalization. When they say inclusive urbanism, what they refer to is the challenge of achieving substantive economic transformation while not driving out current residents. When they say inclusive urbanism, what they really mean--at least sometimes--is gentrification without the side effects.

Thursday's On Point with Tom Ashbrook of WBUR, "Can Startups Share Their Big City Success?" addresses this issue. In an interview with Richard Florida, they explore this issue using the term hoarding economic growth. This is the second time this week I've heard something along these lines. The general argument is that there is substantial economic growth and urban revitalization, but these gains only contribute to growing urban inequality. If the upper middle class does not share their gains, the very real economic gains that are accumulating will be hoarded as inequality only increases.

What would you do to solve this problem? How can we keep the urban renewal gains that we are seeing in many of our cities, while empowering residents that have lived through the worst of their declines and now have nowhere to go?

I'm not sure there's a 'good' solution to this problem, but I couldn't help thinking to myself: by the time these tech companies or advanced industries move in, it is too late for many of the current residents. Isn't there a way we could anticipate and prepare the current residents for the skills and capabilities needed by modern industry? I co-teach a course with Prof. Chris Leinberger of the GW School of Business, and he says that an urban area needs an economic reason to exist. Our cities need to anticipate the economic reasons to exist in the next few decades, and begin preparing our residents--from childhood through adulthood--for these changes so that when inevitable economic shifts do occur, those residents that have weathered the storm can be rewarded.

Have you heard some compelling solutions to these problems?

#TWIST 7 October 2016

seedOctober 7, 2016Leave a comment

It has been quite a while, but I'm back to share something I'm listening to now and want you all to hear. It is a podcast of this past Monday's Dianne Rehm Show titled "Using Design Theory to Build a Better Life." You can get it [here] or [.mp3 here].

Just to get you started, here's a paraphrase from early on: "if 8 out of 10 students here at Stanford answer 'I don't know' as their greatest passion, we need to think of a different approach to counseling students concerning career decisions. We believe that a passion is the end of a life well-lived, not where you start..." [As I said, this is a paraphrase, and is not exact. Go listen to the tape!]

I really hope you will listen to these two former Apple engineers' conversation with Ms. Rehm. It is exciting and insightful, especially for those of us who belive design is one of the defining dimensions of the human life.

Peace and Blessings to you all.

Participatory Dynamics of Urban Systems

seedDecember 26, 2011Leave a comment

During the holiday break, I have had the opportunity to do some undirected reading in a variety of areas. One of the topics I’ve browsed is urban data. My favorite source for this type of work, IBM Smarter Planet, indirectly led me to a transcript of a talk by an IBM Distinguished Engineer, Colin Harrison. He was discussing the advent of Urban Information Networks during the Paris 2030 Colloque.

Harrison specifically focused on the type of data used to link urban services and their users to each other using three classes: the invisible rendered visible, information for resource management, and open data 2.0. Urban information networks are tearing down the boundaries between citizens and their participation in the pragmatic management of their own urban resources by increasing process transparency at the same time exclusivity of information access is reduced.

One of the possibilities emblematic of the types of problems I hope to address in this space is an anecdote Harrison gives concerning CalTrans:

An example of how information enables the inhabitants to most effectively use the immediately available capacity of the total, multi-modal transportation system comes from our work with CalTrans in the San Francisco bay area. Here inhabitants with smart mobile telephones can subscribe to a service that enables CalTrans to observe their journeys based on the GPS reading from the telephone. From these observations CalTrans can determine the individual user’s common journeys. When the system sees the user beginning a familiar journey, for example commuting from home to the workplace, it looks at the multi-modal choices available to the traveller and the operational status of each of those systems along the required paths, and then makes a recommendation to the traveller for the optimal way to make this journey at this time. The traveller thus makes the journey with the minimum delays and disruptions and the transportation systems’ loads can be balanced.

The opportunities in understanding the impacts of the interplay between user behaviors and system properties is truly awesome. Let us work together to continue seeking understanding of how these emerging problems can be more greatly understood.