Tag Archives: sustainable

Hope and Peaches

Posted on by

If you are paying attention, the world is not a super fun place to be right now. 

Donald Trump’s recent reelection has been a source of despair for many who hoped that a Harris presidency would secure LGBT rights, the right to abortion and reproductive health care, and decisive environmental action.

This comes at a time when we’re already experiencing the highest rates of loneliness and isolation ever recorded. The urge to throw in the towel, curl up into a ball and hide from the world is strong. Most people I have talked to in recent weeks say the same. Trump’s reelection feels like a death blow to a vision of a hopeful future already on its last legs.

But it doesn’t have to be. 

In the face of isolation, it’s time to build community. In the face of environmental degradation, it’s time to live sustainably. In the face of national failures, it’s time to act locally. It is time to take experimental living seriously. 

Experimental living is a fairly broad term that describes movements like the Back to the Land Movement of the 1970s and the cohousing movement of today. But really, experimental living is structuring our lives, primarily in the domestic sphere, differently from societal norms and expectations. Experimental living sounds really broad, but means living all of the calls to action above. It means living in community with others, prioritizing sustainability, participating in local government and living in line with our values. 

Given that even dual-income families are struggling to meet expenses, alternatives like co-ops, multi-family housing, and intergenerational intentional communities could be the answer. Cost of both elder and child care can be offset by intergenerational living, multi-family housing allows home ownership even when house prices are prohibitive. Shifting the ideal of adulthood and family from a nuclear family to a broader web of interdependence makes possible other dreams, like home ownership, and strong family bonds.

This may seem like an idealized version of communal living, and it is. No community is without conflict and many family structures fail to provide support, even when living intergenerationally. But these are issues worth working to address seriously, especially when there aren’t other options. Even something as simple as offering or asking help from a neighbor lays groundwork for when there is conflict on a bigger scale. 

I am not suggesting that we all immediately sell all our property, move to the country and live out our dreams of communal living, but I am saying, in the face of the pain, social backsliding, and environmental crisis of this era, we should consider it.

There is a Bloom County cartoon that my father and I quote often that goes like so. The first character is listing all of the things that are wrong in the world, and finally ends with “It’s a rotten world!” to which the second replies, “…with great peaches”. In trying times, I try to remember what my peaches are. Community, the people around me, and the hope that there is a better future coming, one with great peaches.

Loving and Living on the Margins

Posted on by

“We’re a non-violent Catholic lay community, but we try to get it right,” says Brayton Shanley, hands on his hips in the front yard of Agape. “There are a lot of folks out there who don’t do it right. We always say, ‘you gotta do it right’.” 

The most striking thing about Brayton is his deep commitment to the ideals of his faith, especially when living intentionally on, as he calls it, “ the margins”.

Brayton and Suzanne Shanley are the cofounders of the Agape Community, outside of Hardwick, Massachusetts. Agape is a lay community—meaning religious but not part of the church. Pronounced ‘ah-gah-pay’, the name is a Greek term which in Christian theology means unconditional love, specifically spiritual love that expands to all people. It was this name, and the fact that Agape has been around for so long, that drew me to their community in the first place.

Photo from the Agape Website

For many who have been hurt by the Church through oppression or rejection on the basis of gender, race, or sexual orientation, many images of organized religion create a hostile environment. Much of the work that Agape does is to counter that legacy of harm, to “do it right” and live in line with Jesus’s teachings of non-violence and activism.

I have always been interested in intentional communities, places where people try to live everyday life both together and in line with their values. Many intentional communities were founded in the late 1960s and 1970s, as part of the Back to the Land Movement, and while a few remain active, the vast majority have dissolved. 

Agape remains. And the main question on my mind as I took the three hour journey there was: why?

Agape was founded in 1987, but Suzanne and Brayton – the founders and my hosts – began their work in the mid-1970s, drawing on their Catholic and Quaker faith traditions. Inspired by the work of Milwaukee Fourteen, a group of Catholic priests who protested the VietNam war and Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, also nonviolent Catholic activists, they organized for disarmament and non-violence throughout the 1970s-90s. 

When I arrived in the early evening, there were several cars in the steep driveway that leads to Agape. Next to the late fall garden, still volunteering some late rainbow chard and a truly astonishing amount of parsley, two houses stand, woodsmoke drifting up from their chimneys. Above the doorway of the main house was a rainbow flag that read: “Peace”. It felt like home. 

I stood in the yard for a bit, taking in the surroundings. Small placards beneath most trees offered dedications to lost loved ones, calls for peace, prayers for healing. A keffiyeh, a scarf symbolizing solidarity with Palestine, winding between pumpkins on the porch. A St. Francis statue sat next to the door, a small bird perched on his shoulder. Every corner revealed symbols of the deep calling for peace and non-violence that are the founding light of Agape. 

Photo taken at Agape

As I walked up to the main building, and ventured a timid knock, a shout from behind me brought my attention to an older man with a shock white hair, half jogging towards me, with a cordless phone in his hand. “We’ll be right with ya’! Glad you could make it.” He gave me a hug and then hustled back into the house behind him. This was my first introduction to Brayton Shanley. 

After a tour of St. Brigid House, where Brayton and Suzanne live, we went into the main house for dinner. Symbols of faith decorated every surface, from the mantle above the fireplace, to the door which leads to a small one-room chapel, complete with a beautiful stained glass window mounted above a natural driftwood cross. 

I offered to help with dinner, feeling sheepish about their open hospitality that asked nothing of me, while offering so much. Instead, Suzanne simply offered a hug in greeting, and shepherrded me down to their office to chat. Here, too, were countless photographs of Swamis and Catholic priests, clippings of newspapers, portraits of leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Suzanne sat me down with a plate of chips and homemade salsa verde, and said, “So what would you like to know?” 

I asked her to tell me about Agape. And with a twinkle in her eye, she began with its founding in the 1980s and their fight against nuclear arms, and then moved on to talk about their push against the death penalty in the U.S. and towards interfaith peace in the Middle East. The stories Suzanne told affirmed that what Brayton had said outside was true: these were people who were walking the walk, ‘the real deal’, you might say. 

Agape’s ministry extended to death row, where Suzanne and Brayton developed a long-term relationship with Billy Neal Moore, a formerly incarcerated man who would become the first confessed murderer to receive a full commutation of a death sentence as a result of the Shanelys’ support. In fact, as I was sitting in an Uber on my way to Agape, Billy and Suzanne were in their kitchen, on the phone with Moore, sharing the most recent events and struggles in their lives. 

Agape prioritizes non-violence in all things, in community, in activism, in speech, in food and lifestyle. Any conflicts within the group were addressed by sitting down and trying to find common ground. Even though it can be difficult, sometimes, to avoid harm, it is time for community members to part ways, Suzanne said. 

The Agape houses are built and heated with wood harvested from the property around it. All of the logging is done with conscious choice and respect to the natural world. Before dinner, Brayton’s tour took me through the design of the St. Brigid House, with its straw bale construction and solar panels. Agape has been vegetarian for years, but recently, went vegan to further reduce harm to the environment and animals. 

At Agape, alcohol is not allowed and intimate sexual relationships are discouraged on the premises, even for guests. Despite all of these restrictions and the challenges of experimental living, people love to experience Agape: Some come for a weekend. Others stay for years. As Brayton says, “it’s a calling…it’s not easy, but it’s a calling.” 

I have looked at dozens of intentional communities, many of which were also founded in the 1970s and 1980s but have since dissolved. Interns and volunteers help keep Agape afloat, along with long term support from a network of religious and secular partners, but it did lead me to wonder how Suzanne and Brayton cope with the transience, the flow of people, interns, workers, friends, in and out of their community. 

Unbeknownst to me, Agape was facing that exact question, as she and Brayton enter their 80s. “People come and they stay and they get nurtured and so welled up with the beauty of intentional community …and they don’t land,” she said, with a sigh. Despite a lively community and hundreds, if not thousands, of supporters, Suzanne and Brayton are the only original two that remain full-time residents. 

Eventually, Brayton came down and interrupted my conversation with Suzanne. It was time for dinner. Around the table and over some of the best vegan food I have had in years, Sister Judy from Ipswich and Dixon, who had prepared the lovely meal for us. I had been there for all of an hour or so, and yet I sat around their table, chatting and laughing with them. We talked about the struggles of raising children in intentional communities and about the related phenomenon that Suzanne describes as “launch, but not land” that characterizes so much communal living. 

The idea of a “calling” kept coming up throughout the night, as we gradually moved from discussions of meaning and compassion, religious and otherwise, to the more concrete, as I asked about how Agape handles healthcare, conflict resolution meetings and all the other nuts and bolts of communal living. The calling required to live this kind of life—a life dedicated to love, peace, and deep, deep non-violence—isn’t one that can be brought down by loss or insecurity, especially at points of transition.

I had come to Agape, curious about how they had managed to have the longevity that they have had over the years, and was almost disheartened to see how small the actual residential community is. Children raised and moved out, interns gone for the season, the Agape I visited was one of deep love, support, compassion and very few people.

As the night went along, I started to question the assumptions I had coming to Agape. As Brayton and Suzanne retired to bed, and I lay in one of the cold upper rooms, warm under a quilt blanket, I realized that the sorrow and fear of loss, the idea of a failed community, just because of the number of lasting residents, was of my own creation. Things don’t have to be permanent to be valuable. They don’t have to be unchanging to be impactful. Agape is living proof.

Degrowth: End of Society or Vision of the Future?

Posted on by

Image Source: Kamiel Choi

Degrowth is a bit of a buzzword these days. Some of the press is bad, like the WIRED article titled “Why Degrowth Is the Worst Idea on the Planet.” Some of the press is good. Bestselling books like Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel make that case. And like all hot button ideas these days, degrowth is fervently debated on X.

What is degrowth?

Degrowth, in the most limited sense, questions economic ‘growth’—an ever-expanding GDP, for example—as the goal of economic policy. In modern day politics, economic growth is considered not only to be a net good, but a hallmark of a healthy society. In fact, this is one of the few issues both presidential candidates Harris and Trump can agree on. Trump said this explicitly in the 2024 debate, promising a “bigger, better and stronger” and Harris got more specific with her highlight on growing the “clean energy economy”. In a political climate so polarized, “growth is good” is something most everyone seems to agree on. 

The idea of degrowth has been around since the 1970s, when French economist André Gorz coined the term while studying economic policy specifically—but until now, it hasn’t gained much traction in a culture that leads with ‘growth is good’. With existential climate apocalypse looming, so too are questions about the status quo.

Public vs personal approaches

As concern about climate change comes more into the mainstream, people trying to live with less impact on the environment often adopt terms like “degrowth” from academia to describe lifestyle choices that they are promoting. Zero-waste, slow living, communes, intentional communities, anti-consumerism, right-to-repair, ‘live local, think global’ and de-influencing are all social and personal approaches to the degrowth movement, focusing primarily on individual choices that shift families and communities away from relying on a system of infinite economic growth to a low consumption model of living. While most have good intentions, they can seem a little out of touch. Think vegan food influencers and TikToks telling you to get rid of your washing machine. 

The other camp is far closer to Gorz’s original technical usage of the term: the public policy of degrowth. Proponents of this interpretation push for economic and social policies for degrowth, such as moving away from GDP as an indicator of prosperity, and redirecting efforts from sustainable development in the global North to sustainable degrowth, such as prioritizing winterization of existing structures over building new LEED-certified buildings.

In contrast to their vegan, anti-consumer counterparts, policy degrowth advocates usually focus on national and international investment and subsidies systems over individual consumer choice. Some like Jason Hickel do advocate for a complete overhaul of the global economy, but most take a more moderate approach, asking that governments stop using a booming economy as an indicator of wellbeing and instead focus on human needs.

Why are people so mad? 

The majority of the people who take to the Internet to complain about degrowth are responding to political degrowth supporters, but are spreading their message using the imagery of personal degrowth advocates. In a society where growth is not only good, but essential for survival, any push back against that is experienced as threatening. For many contemporary economists, who have dedicated their studies and often their careers to the advancement of growth, degrowth is a dangerous movement that threatens to crash the economy and spread some quasi-Marxist, socialist, global new world order where no one is allowed to eat meat or own a car. 

Pragmatic environmentalists also oppose degrowth because, however valuable it might be, they see the total overhaul of the economy as dead-in-the-water in the current political landscape. Instead, they argue that harnessing the power of economic growth and incentives—such as design competitions or cheap solar panel production—will save the planet from all its climate change woes.

Feminist opposition to degrowth is lesser known but also important.  The current ‘washing machine debates’ give a snapshot of how conversations about individual degrowth are shaped by personal privilege. The washing machine transformed the lives of women starting in the 1950s. They along with other time-saving appliances allowed women to work outside the home, while still fulfilling traditional roles as wife and mother. There is an implicit belief underlying critiques of personal degrowth that only those who have forgotten the struggles of past generations would choose to give up these technologies that shape the world today.

A similar debate concerns how people with disabilities who rely on systems for medicine and adaptive technology would cope without these. The vast system of international shipping that fuels the global economy also delivers ingredients for the manufacture of life-saving medication, like insulin. Aspects of consumption like plastic straws and disposable paper towels are a convenience product many enjoy, but can play a huge role in a disabled person’s day to day life. Unequivocally, the type of personal degrowth choices that are promoted are at odds with technologies that empower disabled people to have agency in their own lives. 

These two critiques of degrowth get tangled in the current debates, clouding both the meaning of degrowth as a term, and sending these two different communities sailing past each other, fighting a strawman army of their own making. 

Why should people care?

While people on the internet have a lot of thoughts about degrowth, the theory may seem out of touch with the current struggles and needs of people on the ground. Political degrowth is an abstract idea being debated in even more abstract terms, where thinkers throw around acronyms like GDP and ILO. Even the personal degrowth of pristine, zero-waste households plastered over the internet that are used to sell metal straws and reusable coffee cups seem out of touch for most middle class consumers.  Why should anyone with a job, bills, family to worry about, care about degrowth?

One reason is that, for better and for worse, economic policy shapes the lives of everyone. Conversations around tax rates, development, sustainable or otherwise, inflation reduction, and budgeting all start with an implicit assumption that growth is good; growth will bring more people health, wealth and happiness. 

How do we go forward?

Popular eco-friendly ideas like sustainable development, buy-less, and the Green New Deal are often seen as a panacea to the problem of climate change. This thinking is understandable. Human suffering, particularly at the hands of the natural world, is scary. An uncertain future is scary. And people respond with the hope that if we just find the right solution, the silver bullet, weed out the bad apples, and then we will be okay. 

In focusing on washing machines and other conveniences, we fight amongst ourselves, stuck in a cycle of judging, justifying and defending. The degrowth debates, in their chaos, remind us that it is easy to talk about big ideas on the Internet, it is easy to make sweeping generalizations about how people should live, and it is easy to be distracted by tech bros on X. What it is hard to do is think critically, imagine a better world and fight to create it, present with the now.

As Andre Gorz reminds us, “theory always runs the risk of blinding us to the shifting complexities of the real world. [Instead, we should] live completely at one with the present, mindful above all of the wealth of our shared life”.

Cultivating Hope: Community-Owned Regenerative Agriculture as a Way Forward

Posted on by
Birdsfoot Farm remains a sturdy, if subdued, tribute to an alternative way of living and farming.

Next to the slightly peeling Obama 2008 bumper sticker sits one with a small white and blue quotation: “Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains.” 

The quote dots the bumpers of the eight or so cars parked in front of the 150-year old barn of Birdsfoot Farm in Canton, NY. Founded in the 1970s as part of the Back to the Land movement, the farm now supports a small cohousing community, a K-12 school, and vegetable plot that supplies produce  to local families and businesses. They host Maypole Dances, an annual Garlic Festival, and weekly potlucks in the main kitchen. They live mostly self-sufficiently, with the occasional luxury bar of chocolate and movie night in town. It is, in many ways, an agrarian utopia. 

This image is not the reality for the vast majority of agriculture that occurs in the United States today. Instead, the food and agricultural landscape is dominated by farms that span millions acres, plant corporation-patented seed corn, and rely on massive center pivot irrigation systems.  Many pay starvation wages to largely undocumented migrant workers who lack the political power to advocate for better conditions. 

Additionally, the switch to industrial farming has dovetailed a shift to majority cash crops, animal feed, and ethanol production, leaving only 2% of American agriculture dedicated to fruits and vegetables, like Birdsfoot is. Of that 2%, the majority of it is in California, with produce then shipped to other states for distribution. 

Industrial agriculture, according to a 2022 special feature review article from the journal Sustainability Science, is a major contributor to “climate change, biodiversity loss, and severe impacts on soil and water quality”, all of which are increasing in intensity and human impact. Around 34% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system, with the majority of that being from industrial agriculture. It also causes harmful algae blooms and ‘dead zones’, like the Gulf of Mexico dead zone which spans 6,705 miles. 

In addition, competition from imported fruits and vegetables is making farming financially unviable for many families. Dulli Tengeler, the primary farmer at Birdsfoot, is grappling with that reality. In 2019, her total income was $3,200, with two kids in college. “We had a great year working together in the gardens and I am happy, and the happy factor is not to be underestimated, but it is not sustainable.” 

Dulli (right) and Goldie (left), in a back field at Birdsfoot Farm.

 

The solution, according to the article’s authors, Cathy Day and Sarah Cramer, lies in what is called regenerative agriculture. 

Regenerative agriculture focuses on improving “the ecological conditions of a farm, while also producing food”, according to Day and Cramer. Regenerative agriculture is a departure from the massive industrial agriculture that has become the American standard of food, feed and ethanol production. Farms that practice regenerative agriculture use fewer external soil amendments, smaller fields, and more diverse crops and are more resilient in the face of climate change.

Regenerative farming is not a new concept.  Remember the six inches of topsoil and rain model of cultivation on those  bumper stickers? Farms like Birdsfoot demonstrate what a more regenerative  model of farming looked like.

The researchers  investigated how this model can be expanded upon and made more viable for struggling farms. Day and Cramer focus on unpacking regenerative agriculture policy, adoption and education. Given how powerful industrial agriculture is, policy that supports smaller farmers is a tough sell to many legislators.

Shifting laws, especially within the American Farm Bill, which outlines American agricultural policy, subsidizes industrial agriculture heavily, is key to making regenerative agriculture viable. Making no- or low-interest loans available to farmers who use regenerative practices or subsidizing labor costs are both policy changes that could have a real impact.

Outside of policy, modern approaches for community and support, like farm to table networks that help fund farmers making the switch and internet communities for sharing ideas. Encouraging farmers to explore new financial models and sharing approaches that work locally are also essential. 

At Birdsfoot farm, a CSA model has been the main reason they remain viable. Birdsfoot also hosts young farmers to come and learn regenerative agriculture techniques who will then continue to bring those principles and techniques to their own farms, highlighting the role of educational networks for farmers. 

While it is by no means a solution to all of our environmental problems, switching from an industrial agricultural model to a regenerative one would reduce the ways in which the current systems perpetuate harm and leave communities vulnerable to climate change and soil degradation. Still, Food produced organically and on a smaller scale through regenerative agriculture is often prohibitively expensive to consumers. The benefits of regenerative agriculture do not fundamentally address the problem of how to implement these changes in a way that doesn’t lead to the creation of food shortages or or more economic hardship, given that cost-saving is a real asset of industrial agriculture. 

So, what to do? Expanding welfare programs, like EBT benefits, to cover CSAs and other models of food distribution is key to reducing harm for those undergoing the shift from industrial to regenerative agriculture. Farmers themselves also play a role in accessibility, such as Birdsfoot’s “Buy a Share, Give a Share” program, that allows wealthier families to contribute to their community by sponsoring an anonymous CSA share. When moving forwards to regenerative agriculture, Birdsfoot Farm, and Dulli specifically, is an inspiration, modelling a path, rather than a destination.

 

Waking from the Good Life; Agrarian Movements and Their Legacy

Posted on by

For many young people, the threat of climate change looms large in our collective consciousness. Questions that used to characterize young adulthood, like career choice, moving out, and the decision to have children have taken on a surreal quality to them, as many young adults believe that we won’t have a future, economically or biologically. Some choose to address this despair with standard fair nihilism, some by channeling their energy towards social causes and some respond by posting videos of themselves making bread on TikTok. 

Figuring out what do do in response to ecological collapse, overconsumption, economic hardship and disconnection from the land is seemingly part of every young person’s psyche these days, manifesting in the cottagecore aesthetics, frenzy around foraging, and the rise of homemaking and farming media that gain millions of views on social media. And of course, a call to return to the land, to live in agrarian communities, close to neighbors, in harmony with the earth. 

Many young people about to enter the job market joke about moving to the countryside with friends and herding goats, or vegetable farming or any wide variety of agrarian pursuits. We laugh and chuckle. “God, I want that so bad.” “I’m sick of online. I want to disconnect, unplug.” It becomes the kind of joke one tells to alleviate longing. We joke, but we also dream of agrarian utopia, of hard labor, and rightness with nature.

Whatever TikTok and other social media may imply, our generation is not the first to ever think of this radical movement away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. The idea of an agrarian utopia is a common thread throughout the history of the United States. Thomas Jefferson’s idea of a yeoman nation of small farmers lie at the heart of much historical republican thought. Amish and Mennonite communities in the U.S. offer a religious version of the same dream. 

More recently in the 1970s, swaths of people moved to rural areas and started co-ops, communes, and intentional communities in what is referred to as the Back to the Land movement. The Back to the Land movement was a part of the social upheaval of the 70s, along with the literature from the Beat Generation, protests against the Vietnam War and second wave feminism. Gary Snyder and other famous thinkers wrote inspiring manifestos about a return to agrarian ideals, local communities, the commune model, and self sufficiency. Importantly, this wasn’t a movement of farming communities reaffirming their livelihood, but people, usually from cities, choosing a separate more ecologically driven lifestyle. 

The dream of the return to nature, back to the land, agrarian utopia is often a far cry from the reality of disconnecting from our modern systems of consumption. There is a reason most of us in the United States think of the Back to the Land movement as failing. Some of these communities still exist, with Maypole Dances, Garlic Festivals and CSAs, but the farmers are aging out of their work, and their children are either not able or interested in continuing their parents’ ideologically driven lifestyle. 

Newcomers to these communities often stay for a few years and then when the stresses of either the work or the chafing of a close community become too difficult to manage, they leave. Agrarian communities that have persisted prior to and after the Back to the Land movement are communities like the Amish, which impose a strict, often religiously backed social code of conduct. The liberal, secular, self-sustaining communities of like minded people that were hoped for in the Back to the Land movement have not remained vibrant. Financial troubles and mass exodus of jobs meant that most communities founded as part of this movement have since been abandoned, farms sold and families departed. 

Given this history, it seems that this recent resurgence of back to the land thought and images of agrarian utopia online are destined either for failure or religious orthodoxy. In light of the climate crisis and the economic fears that hang over this generation, it is worth exploring what it is that caused these previous movements to fall so far from their idealistic beginnings. If we can learn from the past, perhaps we can avoid some of the pitfalls that those before us struggled with. The goal of this project is to explore the rise, success and fall of so-called Back to the Land movements, and unpack both the missteps and virtues of the new online discourse of agrarian utopia. 

In Pursuit of the Perfect Lawn

Posted on by

Mow, water, spray, repeat. 

Americans spend up to six hours per week maintaining their lawn: trimming grass, obsessively spraying God-knows-what to keep the grass a bright green, turning on sprinklers at the crack of dawn— But why? What is it about these small patches of grass that fascinates Americans? 

An eco-anthropological dissertation completed at Salve Regina University analyzes this very question, incorporating historical, critical, and socio-cultural perspectives. The study, which focused on one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Rhode Island, found that American front lawns are sites of both “socially vapid” and “ecological hazardousness” occurrencess. 

To make sense of this, let me introduce you to two houses you would probably recognize. The first house (House A) has a front lawn with long, lumpy, untended brown-ish grass. The other house’s lawn (House B) is the opposite: it is a perfectly manicured, eternally green,weed-free carpet.

Let’s begin with the dissertation’s first  argument: lawns as sites of socially vapid events. That is to say that lawns are spaces where boring, unproductive, and unimportant social interactions happen.

The analysis collected data from 23 front lawns within the town of Barrington, Rhode Island. Among other questions, the study asked participants the following: Do you believe the appearance of your front lawn is a reflection of you? 68% of participants believed it was.

In American suburbs, lawns exist as extensions of the owner, measures of their character, and furthermore, extensions of American values.

The 30 billion dollar lawn industry in the U.S. thrives on the role lawns play in forming   reputations with one’s neighbors, independent of any human interaction— this illustrates lawns as sites of “socially vapid” occurrences. 

This makes sense to me.  Families on my street always treated the residents in House B noticeably better than House A. House B treated their lawn as a prized possession and in turn, they too were treated as such. House A, on the other hand, was often the gossip on the street. People would say, “I can’t believe they let their lawn look like that” or “It’s not that hard to mow your lawn” or “Their lawn makes us all look bad.” 

The goal of the dissertation is to investigate potential for a culturally viable and ecologically beneficial front lawn. Written through an exploration of people’s perception of and relationship with front lawns, the dissertation introduces larger themes important to the American lawn: individualism, control, nationalism, wealth, value, and controlled versions of nature. Understanding these themes are critical in reimagining what our front lawns can look like and how we can interact with them. 

From this perspective, we can see what House A and House B’s lawns share. Neither lawns are sites of play, recreation, community gathering, or lounging. They are, as the study describes, “socially vapid.” This goes hand in hand with the second argument: lawns as sites of ecologically hazardous events.

Unsurprisingly, 80% of the study’s participants reported using a gas lawn mower, a machine already ecologically harmful in its own right. Of the 80%, 62% of participants reported using riding gas lawn mowers, the most polluting of lawn mowers. 

Given the fact that our current system of lawn management and lawn use is ecologically hazardous and socially vapid, reimagining our connection to and affinity for the suburban front lawns is necessary to enact sustainable, effective change. 

So, it turns out that House A is in fact less ecologically hazardous than House B. While House A leaves their lawn alone, House B’s lawn is mowed using a riding gas lawn mower.

This study shows us that the solutions to fixing our lawns can’t be found in a “top five” list. Instead, the study emphasizes that fixing our lawns is really about reimagining much deeper structures rooted in the very fabric of American culture. 

 

The Road to a Sustainable Future: Urban Transportation Policy Reform

Posted on by

Atlanta, Georgia, known as the “poster child of sprawl,” may not be the first place you think of when imagining a forward-thinking city, however, an innovative project aims to combat the issue of congestion as Atlanta’s population doubles in the next fifteen years and turn Atlanta into a walkable and bikeable city. Like New York City’s High Line or Chicago’s 606, 22 miles of disused railroad tracks are to be transformed into a greenway loop by 2030, open to pedestrians and cyclists. This so-called “BeltLine,” proposed in 2001, is a breakthrough in the way that urban planners approach cities — in terms of sustainability, livability, and coherency.

According to the United Nations, more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas, and this number is predicted to rise to two-thirds by 2050. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for 21st-century metropolises to lessen the Western world’s dependence on fossil fuels and provide citizens with alternatives such as bicycling, public transit and walking, following Atlanta’s example. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that one-seventh of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by transportation and that number is also rising. By pursuing options that use less energy and cleaner forms of it, we will be able to not only prevent further global warming but also to improve the quality of life in cities by reducing traffic and smog.

In this beat I will explore the complex challenge of implementing innovative transportation policy reforms as well as sparking a cultural paradigm shift towards the goal of sustainable city-living. How do the obstacles facing the global South in this regard differ from those in the global North? What approaches are working well and in which areas could improvements be made? What roles will technology and lifestyle play in the future to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions? In order to answer these questions, I will examine individual cities as case studies to formulate a hopeful yet critical view of the current state as well as the future of urban transportation.

A Toolkit for Transition: A Review of Take Back the Economy

Posted on by

In one of the cities most impacted by the decline of the United States’ economy, change is happening. Cleveland, Ohio used to be one of the epicenters of America’s industrial heartland– now it is serving as a model for how a city can recover from economic decline and urban decay. This model for change, known as “The Cleveland Model“, is centered within the Evergreen Cooperatives– a group of worker-owned cooperatives that are commited to building sustainable and democratic workplaces that benefit their communities.

Specifically, the Evergreen Cooperatives target the needs of Cleveland’s most dependable institutions, such as hospitals and universities, to ensure that jobs will stay in the city. Currently, Evergreen Cooperatives consists of a solar installation and weatherization program, an industrial-scale laundry service commited to a low environmental impact, and the largest urban food-producing greenhouse in the United States. Not only are these cooperatives owned by the workers themselves, but each is committed to employing those who live in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, where poverty rates can reach 30 percent.

A diagram depicted the exchange of resources in the Cleveland Model.

A visualization of the Cleveland Model via community-wealth.org

The Cleveland Model demonstrates how a community can ethically and sustainably redevelop, but how do other communities follow suit? In their book, Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide to Transforming our Communities, a team of geographers shows how people around the world are building such resilient community economies. Although the authors J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy are all geographers with specialties ranging from feminism to the environment, the book is not a scholarly review. Rather, Take Back the Economy tells the stories of successful and inspiring projects while also providing tools and resources to help guide readers to make change themselves. In that way, Take Back the Economy is more than a book– it is a toolkit that can be used by activists, leaders, students, and academics alike.

The book explores how communities can make change happen in five different sectors of our community economies: work, business, markets, property, and finance. Each of these sectors is reframed to take into account our ethical responsibility to one another and our natural world. This approach helps us to see that places like Cleveland can serve as a compelling model for rethinking both work and business. Far beyond Cleveland, the book provides countless examples of groups of people who are making change happen in each of the five sectors of our community economies.

For instance, Take Back the Economy reframes work as a means to surviving well, which can benefit our material, social, community, and physical well-being. With the Cleveland Model, the cooperative-style of business gives marginalized workers a means to improve their material well-being, build stronger interpersonal relationships, and give back to their communities.”Evergreen has changed my life. It enabled me to be a contributer, not only to the community, but to society as well,” stated one worker. With the Cleveland Model, work is not just a means to make income, but it is also a way to increase personal well-being.

Take Back the Economy additionally provides tools that help us to rethink the different sectors of our community economies. In the case of business, the book provides an exercise called the “People’s Account” which breaks down business models to see how much revenue workers generate versus how much they actually get paid. In a typical corporation, minimum-wage earning workers only receive a small fraction of the profits they generate from working, leading to surplus profits that don’t always benefit the workers. While some surplus may be used to sustain the business, a lot is left to accumulate in the pockets of CEOs. Even so, CEOs can pack up and leave a community when a business model in another part of the world becomes more profitable, making these business models even less sustainable.

However, in cooperatives like those used in the Cleveland Model, workers collectively determine their wages so that they earn a reasonable income for the value of their work. At the same time, the cooperatives can generate collective wealth that can be invested back in their business and in their community. Especially important to Cleveland, the businesses are owned by members of the community, meaning the businesses are more likely to remain invested in the city, creating long-term and reliable jobs. As one worker in Cleveland noted, “I am an owner, not just a worker. I help to make decisions within the community.”

Take Back the Economy goes even further to explore redevelopment strategies ranging from alternative currencies to communal ownership of land. No matter the topic, the stories, tools, and frameworks provided by the book are both accessible and empowering to the reader. While considerable engagement, organizing, and work is needed to transform our communities, the ideas and examples in Take Back the Economy can serve as a starting place. With many communities already paving the way, more can work together to a build a more ethical and sustainable world.

Can Megacities Be Sustainable?

Posted on by
Skyline of Tokyo during the night

Picture taken by toykoform (flickr.com)

9/15/2015 by Alisha Pegan

As the plane descends for landing, what is your first thought when you peek out the airplane window and take in the countless lights, cars, and buildings living below?

A common reaction is “WOW. There are so, so many!”. Yes, so many things and people buzzing about and taking up resources, water, energy, human capital. So, what feeds it all? Where does the supply begin and where does it end? And in the perspective of sustainability: is there a way to make it full circle? Is there and could there be a self-sustaining megacity?

This question is a global concern. The WorldBank statistics indicate that currently 54% of the global population lives in urban areas and by 2030 it will increase 66%. As urban density increases, county and city governments are investigating and applying strategies to manage the people, as well as their short and long term needs, while providing a high quality of life. Navigating the intercept of quality of life and sustainability on a city-wide level can provide systematic solutions, such as livability, green infrastructure, and resilience. Various megacities will serve as case studies elaborating best and worst cases for different mitigation and adaption strategies, and since these diverse solutions need diverse input from politicians, citizens, intellects, and artists, there will also be investigations of why the strategies may or may not work from social, environmental, and economic factors.