Panel 13: Who Will Teach the Teachers?
THE WORLD IN 2050: CREATING/IMAGINING JUST CLIMATE FUTURES
A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE
Panel 13: Who Will Teach the Teachers?
Education in 2050 – Taking Back Our Schools
Sandra Lindberg, System Change Not Climate Change
This presentation traces a possible future of education in the year 2050. Expanding beyond merely the classroom, this talk suggests that this future also has the potential to rethink capitalism and reintegrate humans with planet (more).
A Creative World Needs Child Centric Communities
Hasmukh Sapnawala, Experience Based Holistic Learning Environment
By 2050, this presentation envisions we have moved towards self-sustaining communities where the focus of life is promoting happiness, health and harmony for everyone, specifically children. The presenter will walk us through the steps needed to get to such a world given where we are now (more).
Storefronts for Good: Local Action through Coursework
Susan Dieterlen, Syracuse University
Local, repeatable actions can sidestep government dysfunction and financial limits, while strengthening city-wide community. Neighborhood storefronts are an everyday nexus of sustainability and justice, fighting food deserts, unemployment and vacancy while improving walkability. This talk will explore this topic as a way to combat climate change while improving socio-economic conditions in more depth (more).
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Hi and thanks for visiting our panel! My talk, Storefronts for Good, is positioned within environmental design (aka architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and interiors), although the talk presents an interdisciplinary course. I’m particularly interested in how you see this course and topic connecting with students in your discipline, whatever that discipline is. Will it be an intriguing course, a basic one, or too far away from student interests?
The storefronts topic arose from discussions with community leaders, as a completely grass-roots idea disconnected with theory. In urban design, we’d call this a tactical intervention – a narrowly targeted alteration to physical form designed to produce a broader effect. What concepts or theories in your area of expertise overlap with this?
I’m also interested in other people’s experiences with experiential learning. What have your experiences been like, good and bad? If you have no experience with experiential learning, why not? Also happy to hear comments and questions on other aspects. Again, thanks for your interest!
Hi Susan,
I really enjoyed your talk.
I’m in an anthropology department, where undergrad students are getting early training in ethnographic methods, so are getting early experience in “being out there into the field” — usually just the diverse neighbourhoods surrounding our downtown campus. The students are tending to look at how diversity and multiculturalism (and similar concepts/constructs) play out. I think adding a present burning issue, such as climate change, would really help to nuance their analyses of social interactions and built space. At my second home in an environmental studies department, students are doing a lot of local applied research, as well as internships . My clear sense is that the upper-year students in this program are very keen and ready for community involvement and problem solving. Bottom line: this teaching model would be extremely well-received by students in both departments. I’d love to refer your contact information and this video to some faculty and program coordinators.
You raise a key point in your discussion: that a project such as this teaches that there is VALUE in small, local, manageable action. I think students need to not just be reminded of this, but to experience this. The chance for experience is what makes this project so important.
Many students are disillusioned about what they can “do” in the face of our climate crisis, and this is not helped by their alienation from many of its consequences. To enhance a sense of personal value and contribution, and to do it one’s own community, is of immeasurable value to students concerned with any of the manifold consequences of climate crisis, from the overrepresentation of minorities and the poor in areas adjunct to noxious industry (urban, and rural), to animal welfare, to the need for sustainable energy solutions. (I agree with your view that this project would be useful for a diverse range of students)
Your project gives a real groundedness to the “We’re All In It Together” line that often gets touted, but that students have difficulty taking seriously. ((and why should they? The realities of climate change are vastly heterogeneous)). On this final note, one thing I wonder: the walkable city you describe is certainly a more just city in many ways. Do your students generally like the idea of living like this themselves, or do they struggle to imagine their own lives beyond their cars and the mall — no matter how “good” they know the walkable city would be?
Look forward to your answers!
Hi, Rachel- Thanks for all this great feedback! Please feel free to pass along the information and my email address to anyone who might be interested. You or they are also welcome to email me directly at susan@deftspacelab.com.
This is my third or fourth time through this kind of focus in an experiential project. I’ve found the selection of topic (eg: storefronts) and the framing of the problem to be solved in the assignment is absolutely key. One interesting and hopeful note is that the hands-on practicality of the work seems to sidestep political differences among the students. I think this kind of approach would work very well with anthropology students and/or environmental studies students – actually, it’d be great to get them in the same class together, since their expertise would be complementary.
Good point: do we “walk” the walkable city talk ourselves? Mixed results on the student response to that – depends on the class, really. Students who live near the campus often do conduct their daily lives on foot or bike, and a fair number of our many international (mostly Asian) students commute by bus and do not have a private car. Many others drive to campus and everywhere else, though. Conversations about walkability in our own lives quickly become about crime/perception of danger from crime (not always the same thing) and snow (in our famously snowy city). These too are non-threatening ways into conversations about social justice and the subtle environmental justice concerns about whose environments are safe for walking and who can choose to drive instead. The campus commute also makes a pretty good choice for a manageable “climate change mitigation in your own life” topic – what would it take to get you to not drive, what are the alternatives, what is the GHG impact of your choice, etc.
How does this compare with your students in Toronto?
Hi Susan,
I will absolutely be in touch.
I agree – practicality does tend to sidestep political difference. Unless there’s a climate change denier in the bunch (!), a shared understanding within this generation of students is that this project would be directed towards a valuable cause. Your framing is great: “what would it take to get you to not drive?”. Drive here could also mean “mix my recyclables”, “leave my lights running when I’m not home,” or “eat a diet rich in animal products” — what’s so key is holding the students to account and placing them as agents of change in the status quo.
Something I find with my first-year Environmental studies students is that they are quite confident in listing their ‘ bad environmental habits’ – usually driving too much, shopping too much and always wanting the newest thing (thus producing lots of waste), and “not spending enough time in nature.” They are also very fatalistic about the potential for change in these areas and see things as quite black and white, with society controlling human lives and humans having little agency for change. It’s sort of like they have this idea of a pristine prelapsarian “nature” that can never be returned to, so why bother? This is something I try to teach out of them; their two options are not EITHER Edenic Utopia OR pollution, social inequality, extinction, a terrible future to leave future generations, etc. Their two options are taking themselves seriously as actors/agents, or being complacent and reproducing problematic circumstances.
I am strongly in line with your view that having them engage with urban spaces is an important first step in this bridge in thinking. By first recognizing that “the environment” include the place they get coffee in the morning, I think they are much better primed to position themselves as do-ers.
One interesting extension of your project that just occurs to me is having students “pick” a storefront and then ask them to map the commodity chain, concealed relationships, transnational dealings, etc., ETC. behind that storefront. For them to see the massive political-economic-social-environmental constellation in which this shop is embedded could be really valuable in connecting the local with the “elsewhere.”
Lots of thoughts…
Love your ideas for topics and the commodity chain. I’ll lift that commodity chain idea if this course goes – so thanks for that. 🙂 That has a great tie to vertical integration locally, which would lift as many boats as possible – a real priority in Syracuse, especially to our community collaborators working in impoverished neighborhoods. We have a strong maker movement here and an excellent start-up network, so great possibilities to tie into that.
Yes! the suggestion and demonstration of how YOU the student can indeed make a difference is really, really meaningful. It’s easy to forget, a few decades on (for me), how powerless undergrads often feel, and how distant from the adults (“adults”?) who run things. The state of politics and government dys/function in the US really encourages that mindset, and we all feel fatigued and despairing in the face of climate change. I find my students, whether from environmental design fields (architecture, etc.) or ecologically related ones (env. science, etc. ) are doers by nature, so this kind of message finds a warm reception.
Given the politics of Upstate NY, I suspect I’ve had a few climate change deniers in class, but I’ve not had a problem with it – not sure whether that’s because the project is well-designed or because people realize that’s what they are signing up for with one of my classes…. I do stress the triple bottom line (economic/social/ecological) pretty strongly, so it’s difficult to dismiss the whole idea. Not sure what your students are like at Toronto, but I’d expect more pushback about the vegan/animal diet idea than your other ones – here I’d run into static from farm kids and hunters. Could be really unpredictable (perhaps very interesting) with the international ones as well (we have a high percentage of East Asian/Middle Eastern students).
Hi Susan–a really interesting and applied course. I really like the idea–including how interdisciplinary this can e–and hope this course evolves to a point where you can actually rent a storefront over a semester and try out students’ store ideas (if it hasn’t already). I often visit Middletown, CT (home of Wesleyan) and could imagine this working very well there too–with its reviving Main Street but with still a lot of vacancy.
The one challenge–or perhaps opportunity–that I hope you’ll incorporate into the course is to discuss what a ‘storefront for good’ really can and should include. Yes, obviously a small grocery store serving healthy food options, and sure a bike shop or secondhand store, maybe a training facility for DIY skills. And on the other end, obviously not a Liquor Store or Vape Shop. But what about those stores in between? Those that stimulate unsustainable consumer behaviors: pet stores, fashion boutiques, nail salons, electronics stores, etc. It’d be interesting to create some discussion space around what is and isn’t a Storefront for Good. And I’m sure there’ll be a lot of healthy debate around it!
Erik
Hi, and thanks for your comments. I very much like the idea of having a real storefront to test out ideas, and there’s some good possibilities for that through our community collaborators. Some of them have done pop-up business (mostly restaurants, I think) initiatives recently, so it seems like a logical next step from that. For the sake of discussion here, I’d say the barriers to that idea would be the limited timeframe of the semester, including the time needed to get the non-campus folks involved on board. I’d also expect some protest from admin about the potential hazards of putting students in a vacant/underused retail building (asbestos, possibly unsafe floors and railings, etc.). Quite possibly concerns about the safety of students in the neighborhood, as well, although Syracuse U gets students out into rough neighborhoods a lot, so maybe less protest here than other universities.
Re: what kind of store/business: really interesting point, and ties nicely to Rachel Levine’s “commodity chain” idea (other comment string). Since we’d be working with community collaborators, this would require great delicacy – the most promising and realistic business ideas might well not be the most ecologically sustainable. This is a place where “all or nothing” could really scuttle the project, so it might become an exercise in determining how to make the imperfect less bad – perhaps a useful skill to learn.
Again, for discussion here, I’ll add that in my discussions with the community collaborators, I’ve heard the most enthusiasm about restaurants for this kind of activity, so that’s not clear cut in eco-value. Food desert, food insecurity, and community gardens/urban sustainable ag are all in play locally as well, so there’s a wealth of established real-world initiatives to tap into, plus some energy on campus, also. I believe some of the restaurant enthusiasm is due to this: http://whitman.syr.edu/programs-and-academics/centers-and-institutes/falcone/programs/ssic.aspx (although it’s not at all clear that this fosters restaurants). One point made strongly by a community collaborator working in one of the most impoverished areas of the city is that starting a restaurant is an attainable and imaginable goal for people, particularly women, of limited means and with limited education. Other kinds of entrepreneurship can be just too much out of the experience of neighborhood residents to be a goal. All of this was news to me.
Hi, Susan. Thank you — your talk is engaging and full of great information and imagery. I like your focus on the storefront, because it is so accessible and familiar, and most students probably already have good associations they can bring to thinking about them. I’ve tried a number of experiential learning workshops in sustainability with students. The ones that have worked best have involved real hands-on engagement with actual problems (the campus waste audit, which involved donning hazmat suits and going through a day’s worth of trash from a dorm and a classroom building, will never be forgotten by those students). Also the ones where they got to meet people doing the jobs that affect their lives, be it waste haulers or food preparers or the director of the farmers’ market, had a lot of impact. Seeing the integrity and thoughtfulness they bring to what our relatively wealthy students might be predisposed to see as demeaning occupations was of immense value.
One piece you might consider including is introducing your students to the regulatory level of urban planning. I’m now on the Board of Zoning Appeals, and it has been a huge eye-opener about the kinds of changes city residents find threatening or appealing. Every proposal for a new corner store is met with huge resistance from the neighborhoods – you could bring your students to a meeting to see the dynamics behind that.
Hi, Rachel, thanks for these. Yes, the controversy over corner stores is a really interesting wrinkle in this topic, especially because the storefront idea completely grew out of my conversations with the community collaborators listed in the presentation (I originally had some other ideas for topic). For anyone else reading this, the city of Syracuse has had a real push against corner stores (that always seems to be the phrase used) in some of the city’s more troubled neighborhoods, with the rationale that the stores are a catalyst for criminal behavior (I think that’s drug dealing). I believe this push is grass roots from residents, not from city officials, but Rachel might know more…? It’s especially interesting in light of the simultaneous concern about food deserts in Syracuse, because while corner stores might not sell the best selection of food or have the fairest prices, they do make some products available right within the neighborhoods.
The whole dance between proposed ideas/plans/initatives and what actually happens or gets built on the ground is usually opaque to students and worth exploring. Zoning is without question a part of that (I say as a former practitioner).
If this class proposal goes anywhere, I look forward to comparing notes in person, Rachel!
Sandra Lindberg on 10/27/16 at 12:23 pm
Thanks for taking a look at “Education in 2050.” What I share here is shaped not only by the powerful authors I have been reading, but by lived experience, too.
In 1997, my husband and I–as well as all the inhabitants of Grand Forks, ND and East Grand Forks, MN–were forced to evacuate when the Red River flooded. Two weeks later, when we returned to our home, my husband and I and our neighbor were the only ones on the block. There was no electricity, no police, and no city services of any kind. In other words, we were on our own. As people trickled back into town, we learned to work together, just as I imagine people will learn to do in 2050.
My understanding that our current US school system fails many of our students stems from the experiences our son endured within the system. As our struggles worsened, I joined with various groups in Illinois attempting to end the tyranny and expense of standardized testing. Talking with other Illinois parents, I came to understand how undemocratic our school system has become.
Finally, my choice to speak as if I were from 2050 probably has something to do with the fact that I’m a retired associate professor of theatre from Illinois Wesleyan University. I took early retirement from that institution to pursue more freely the environmental and activist work now part of my every day.
A reading list for my presentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnbFWOZRcB41CiqZN-lJxHj69I7sdyJo_XM0EFdBJuE/edit
Hi Sandra,
An exciting and realistic vision for school in 2050. It’s funny, but what you’re describing is how I’m trying to homeschool my own son. He’s 4 now so mostly we’re focused on playing, but a significant portion of the “education” time is on primitive skills–acorn processing, foraging, tracking, etc. As he gets older, systems thinking, an accurate history, basic skills, and much of else what you describe will be added into his curriculum.
And absolutely: Earth-studies have to be at the very core of education in the future–an idea I’m also trying to draw out in the next State of the World: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet.
While I hope you’re right that we will have more teachers per students, I think this may be because more unemployed individuals will barter their time and knowledge in a community for housing, food and a small stipend–more like in the colonial days. Though the darker future scenario is more of a low income country–where you have one overstressed state teacher trying to manage 40 students with almost no resources. That will probably happen in many parts of the US as well (though hopefully that’ll accelerate the reclaiming of education by communities).
Finally, can you make the reading list available to all (I couldn’t access the link–as it was private). I’d be interested to see the list.
Erik
Hi, Erik:
I’ve taken care of the reading list. You should get an email about that pretty much right away.
Glad to hear you are home-schooling your son. Sam and I home-schooled our son for 6th, 7th and 8th grades, a challenging and rewarding experience. But we still did not trust enough our son’s ability to develop a renewed love learning and resorted to directing his studies more than I wish we had. He’s out of public school now. My reading about educational theory continued, and so you see what I’ve submitted here. Public school, again not because I believe the teachers wish for this to happen, somehow turns off many students’ desire to explore and learn on their own. Since leaving high school, our son has slowly rediscovered this drive to explore as his needs and interests dictate, a rediscovery I am thrilled to see. Even I have discovered how being part of an educational institution dampened my interest in, and ability to, explore knowledge. Since taking early retirement I have been reading voraciously and widely, a state of being I do not anticipate will end.
Will you post here or make a note to message me when you finish State of the World: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet? I would be very interested to see what you devise.
Your thoughts about teacher/student ratios are most interesting. I may have been too indirect, but in the town I describe in my presentation, a socialist system prevails. There are no salaries, and no ‘jobs’ as such. There is no hierarchy of one ‘job’ being compensated more richly than another, so the artificial compensation scheme forced upon workers by capitalism disappears and people are able to balance their choice of work that appeals to them with the community’s decisions about the kinds of work needed to keep everybody healthy and happy. I also suggest in the presentation that not every community will elect such a socialist system. In those towns the kinds of realities that you describe, 1 teacher for 40 students or small-stipend arrangements and bartering might become the reality.
One last thought: as I view and think about the many powerful presentations that are part of this conference, I have become aware that my own suggest the world will experience a truly violent and destructive period before the little town I talk about finds its way into existence. I understand that many presenters at this conference still believe that such dire circumstances can be avoided. The more I view their work, the more hopeful I become. I wish very much to be wrong about the dark path that I imagined when I created my presentation.
If you have time, please go to Facebook today and search for Standing Rock and Red Warrior Camp. Yesterday, ND police attacked Water Protectors with sound cannons, pepper spray, rubber bullets and truncheons. They fired live ammunition at protesters on horses, injuring the animals. This is happening again today as I type this. If you and I, and others on this site, are to be part of imagining 2050, we must cry out against what is unfolding in North Dakota. We can’t get to a better future until we face what we have, so far, wrought. And phone or email the White House to protest: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.
In solidarity,
Sandra
As my link to GoogleDocs is not open to everybody (sorry about that!), I’m posting the reading list for my presentation here, though this window will not allow me to format italics or underlines–which will mean a bit of wading through for readers:
2050Ed Suggested Reading List (and always growing)
Fiction
Atwood, Margaret. MaddAddam Trilogy. New York: Anchor Books, 2013.
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Warner Books, 1998.
LeGuin, Ursula K. Always Coming Home. University of California Press, 1985.
Galeano, Eduardo. Memory of Fire: 3. century of the wind. Cedric Belfradge, trans.
London: Quartet Books, 1988.
Starhawk. The Fifth Sacred Thing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.
Food and Health
Adams, Barbara Berst. Micro Eco-Farming: Prospering from Backyard to Small Acreage
in Partnership with the Earth. Auburn CA: New World Publishing, 2004.
Foster, Steven and James A.Duke. Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants. Boston: Houghton-
Mifflin, 1990.
Holthaus, Gary. Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us about
Subsistence, Sustainability and Spirituality. University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
Peterson, Lee Allen. A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North
America. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977.
Solomon, Steve. Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times. Gabriola
Island BC; New Society Publishers, 2005.
Werner, David with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell. Where There Is No Doctor: a
village health care handbook. Berkeley CA: Hesperia Health Guides, 1977.
History
Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. Signet Classics: 1961.
Coulter, Karen. The Rule of Property. New York: Apex Press, 2007.
Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America.
Harcourt Brace & Co., 1981.
Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond
the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007.
Giroux, Henry A. “Higher Education and the Promise of Insurgent Public Memory.”
Truthout, 3.3.2015; http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29396-higher-educationand-
the-promise-of-insurgent-publicmemory#
14761186386441&action=collapse_widget&id=0&data=.
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.
Gott, Richard. Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt. London: Verso,
2011.
Theoretical Systems
Angus, Ian. “How to Make an Ecosocialist Revolution,” keynote presentation to the
Climate Change Social Change conference in Australia, 10.2.2011; accessed at
Climate & Capitalism; http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/10/07/how-to-makean-
ecosocialist-revolution/.
Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group,
1985.
Foster, John Bellamy and Brett Clark and Richard York. The Ecological Rift:
Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010.
Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology: materialism and nature. New York: Monthly
Review Press, 2000.
“How to Change the World: A Very Brief Instruction to the Works of Paulo Freire and
August Boal.” Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed;
http://ptoweb.org/resources/.
Mészáros, István. Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness: Volumes 1 & 2. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2010 and 2011.
Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the
International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books, 2014.
Shiva, Vandana. Tomorrow’s Biodiversity. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.
Shoatz, Russell Maroon. Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell
Maroon Shoatz. PMPress, 2013.
Williams, Chris. “What would a sustainable society look like?” Climate and Capitalism;
http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/cuba-education-and-revolution/.
Education
De Quesada, Ricardo Alarcón. “Cuba: Education and Revolution.” Monthly Review,
63:03 (July-August), 2011; http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/cuba-educationand-
revolution/.
Erickson, Megan. Class War: The Privatization of Childhood. London: Verson, 2015.
Foster, John Bellamy. “Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: the U.S. Case.”
Monthly Review, 63:03 (July-August), 2011, 6-37;
http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/education-and-the-structural-crisis-ofcapital/.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Roman and
Littlefield, 2000.
Freire, Paulo. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge,
1994.
Giroux, Henry A. “Beyond Pedagogies of Repression.” Monthly Review, 67; 10 (March),
2016; http://monthlyreview.org/2016/03/01/beyond-pedagogies-of-repression/.
Grant, Carl A. “Voices, Not Numbers: Towards a Greater Democracy in Education.”
Monthly Review, 68:01 (May), 2016;
http://monthlyreview.org/2016/05/01/voices-not-numbers/.
Paul, Eden and Cedar. “Independent Working Class Education–Thoughts and
Suggestions.” WSF Pamphlet, 1918, 31pp;
https://www.marxists.org/archive/paul-eden&cedar/1918/x01/thoughts.htm.
Putnam, Julia Pointer. “Another Education is Happening.” Monthly Review, 63:03 (July-
August), 2011; http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/another-education-ishappening/.
Roar Magazine. “Dismantling neoliberal education: a lesson from the Zapatistas”
4.4.2016; https://roarmag.org/essays/neoliberal-education-zapatista-pedagogy/
Simmons, May Wood. “Education and Socialism.” International Socialist Review, 1:10,
1901; https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/simmons/educat.htm.
Skeels, Robert D. “On Adult Education’s Critical Role in Social Justice.” 3.13.2012.
Accessed at National Coalition for Literacy;
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/03/on-adult-educations-critical-role-in.html.
Sandra, I haven’t had a chance to watch your presentation yet, but if you want a public web location for your reading list that allows more functionality than what you’ve got here, I’d be happy to put it on my website temporarily. You could just email me the formatted list with any links in it you want, and I could send you a link to the new webpage and/or post it here.
Hi Sandra,
I’ll be commenting in more detail soon, but for now have a suggestion for further reading on eco-thoughtful education. This is something that students in many of my courses read, and really “get.” It’s an excellent primer for critical thinking at the start of my environmental studies courses; most of my [university] students – many foreign- have never, ever, EVER been exposed to the possibility that education could be dangerous, problematic, much less not of value.
Orr, David. “What is education for.” Context 27, no. 53 (1991): 52-58.
Hi, Rachel,
I look forward to your comments. And I’ve found and created a copy of the Orr article, which I know I will learn much from reading. Thank you for that!
In solidarity,
Sandra
For Hasmukh Sapnawala:
I appreciate your point that it is not, as we often mis-state, the planet’s future that is in jeopardy, but rather humanity’s future. The planet will continue with or without us (although we will take plenty of other species with us into oblivion). An important perspective to keep in mind.
Regarding your proposal for independent living-working communities (sorry – I don’t recall the term you used for them), I wonder about how these communities interact with each other, socially but also spatially. The implication seems to be that these communities would be at quite a low density, so plenty of space between them. This seems to depend on population decline…? Or on adjusting your basic community template for different climate zones and environmental conditions (rainfall, temperature extremes, topography, soil types), so that areas of the world that currently have a lower population density can support more people.
I think an interesting larger question pointed to by your presentation (and others at this conference) is whether the way to make the world in 2050 more just and equitable as well as more ecologically sustainable is to lower the standard of living of those at the top, globally speaking, while raising the standard of living of those at the bottom, and have the two extremes meet somewhere in the middle. This is a very different attitude than the prevailing one of raising the bottom up to the top. I welcome your thoughts on this.
Susan