Online Lightning Talks
Creative Economy Observatory in Santos City, Brazil : Measuring Policies and Programs
Virtual Lightning Talk Niedja Santos
The Creative Economy Observatory is a research related to the measurement of creative economy in Santos City, Brazil, including the assessment of cultural fields in its various dimensions and performance over time. It gathers more than twenty indicators, becoming a tool for decision making. The initiative was inspired by the 2005 UNESCO Convention of Diversity of Cultural Expressions. The Creative Economy Observatory was referenced by UNESCO in the publication "2018 Global Report Re-Shapping Cultural Policies," released in December 2017. In this communication it will be explained the creation, challenges and lessons learned. Santos is a coastal city of 430,000 inhabitants located only seventy km from Sao Paolo. Its gross domestic product is about US$ seven billion, making Santos the thirty-eighth wealthiest city among the 5,570 Brazilian cities. Santos also appears in several rankings as the best city to live in Brazil, as well as leads and composes several rankings of public security, urbanism, management, government transparency, and so forth. But on the other hand, the city deals with serious issues concerned to social and economic inequality. Anyway, as the three main characteristics usually attributed to creative cities are clearly identified in Santos, including connections, innovation, and cultural assets. In this context, the policies are focused on creative economy to foster social, economic, and urban sustainable development.
Management of Brownfield Sites in the Context of Resilience
Virtual Lightning Talk Nathalia Da Mata
In discussions about sustainability of cities, much has been said about resilience, with great focus on mitigation measures for cities at risk of disasters, as landslides, floods, and other events of natural motivation. However, there are other forms of events that may compromise the integrity of cities which originate in human actions that deserve greater attention, such as soil contamination. In this article, the soil contamination is focused as a disaster by human actions, and the importance of redevelopment of contaminated sites as a factor for the development of urban resilience and quality of life, especially in developing countries, such as the case of Brazil. This article elucidates that, even with thirty years of advances in environmental legislation in this country, soil degradation remains present. Urban sprawl has been occurring in a way that brownfield sites end up receiving new uses, often exposing users to contaminants and causing health risks. Therefore, the awareness of the redevelopment of brownfields is extremely important for the future of cities, indicating urban resilience. For this, however, the presence of the government is necessary, implementing policies in favor of the environment.
Using Andragogy to Educate for Sustainability: Considerations for a Graduate Program in Landscape Science
Virtual Lightning Talk Pedro Gutiérrez Yurrita
Public institutions of higher education have the unavoidable commitment to make scientific, humanistic, and technological knowledge generated, a public good. The duty of public educational institutions is to develop sustainable projects with different sectors of society in order to reflect their particular historical characteristics, their culture, and their needs. The most important responsibilities of universities are create habits, skills, and abilities (teaching), generate knowledge (research), and disseminate it to the rest of society by creating environmental awareness (extension). This latter aspect has special significance, since according to the substantive functions of the university and purpose of doctoral programs is that the information generated is applied in the sectors of society that demanded . This paper discusses the educational model called Andragogy, which upholds university expectations with great success to respond to societal issues.
Coordinated Distributed Agriculture: A Proposed Model for Food Security in the Pacific Islands
Virtual Lightning Talk Keith Sakuda
The lack of agricultural resources on many Pacific Islands has created a food security crisis. Pacific Islands have always had limited amounts of arable soil and freshwater, but climate change and rising sea levels are further complicating the ability of islanders to grow their own food. Without viable subsistence agriculture most Pacific Islands struggle for physical and economic access to healthy food and nutrition. For five years the author worked with an award-winning social enterprise that sought to pioneer a community-based approach to food production in indigenous island communities. Although the organization is no longer operational, the lessons it learned provide insights for others seeking to address food security in the Pacific. In particular, the organization’s model of Coordinated Distributed Agriculture (CDA) may offer a solution for food security in Pacific Island communities. CDA’s theoretical ability to sustainably produce food despite limited freshwater and arable soil has the potential to empower families and communities to take ownership of their own health and nutrition. This paper discusses the five principles of CDA: (1) Redefined Agricultural Space, (2) Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivated Growing, (3) Centralized Coordination Through Market-Based Incentives, (4) Community-Based Alternative Distribution Channels, and (5) Mission-Driven Success Metrics. An honest discussion of the organization’s failed effort to implement CDA in a Native Hawaiian community will also be offered. It is hoped that this presentation will provide a conceptual framework others may use to create their own community-based efforts to address food security in the Pacific Islands.
Connecting College Students with an Island Community and the Environment Through a Shared Experiential Learning Opportunity
Virtual Lightning Talk Alicia H. Sprow, Spencer S Stober
As we become more globally connected, have our daily interactions within our local communities weakened? Has our focus on sustainable practices been superseded by our throwaway mindset? Both are essential questions to ask when addressing the issue of sustainable practices across our society. This paper describes an ongoing Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) program with a rural island community located in New Brunswick, Canada that focuses on weaving sustainable practices into the fabric of a community’s decision-making process using the framework of Nature-Centered Leadership (Stober 2013). During the initial phase of the project, the pilot study identified education as a driving factor to increase awareness about the importance of implementing sustainable practices. In an effort to engage the island community as an equal partner in the research process, community members and the Alvernia research team have developed the second phase of this project, which involves experiential learning opportunities on the island. Through these experiences, the college students and the island community members have the opportunity to reconnect with themselves, with their local and global communities, and with the natural environment. These interactions provide both groups with a new lens through which to examine their own connection with themselves, a better understanding of the inner workings of a community, and the impact sustainable decision-making can have on preserving the natural environment within those communities. These experiences provide a greater understanding of sustainable practices and the role Nature-Centered Leadership can play in community engagement (Sprow & Stober, 2012).
Integrating Agent Metrics for Cooperative Inter-disiciplinary Research and a Global Sustainability Literacy
Virtual Lightning Talk Ariel Toh
Most interpretations of interdisciplinary research recognized that there are several constraints on long-term research activities imposed by competing interest, conflicting objectives, and capacity of skills and resource. This fundamental understanding leads to aggregating a performance indicator associated to a researcher, student, or educator. At different phases of research and development (R&D), several performance factors can arise to manage interdisciplinary skills and to assess the contribution of the different participant. Cases where conflicting interests can arise, and demanding scenarios shows that an individual needs to be conformable using different skills. A deductive method can also take place after a content analysis between agents, which helps to recommend effective decisions that are prompted at a short time frame or when different sustainability perspectives lead to a lack of specificity, deterring progress. Agent impact assessment (AIA) therefore, can be applied to identify the weak and stronger influences of socio-economic hotspots, associated with the impact assessment for a sustainable industry. When integrating agent metrics for impact assessment, a cooperative research and work environment evolves, and co-creates a better literacy of sustainability transitions in the market sector. This literacy can be seen from the ways researchers, students, and academic institutional party roles involve in the research and development phase for academic learning and how proposed methods by agents can be monitored and simultaneously intervened for better sustainability literacy. The framework of integrating agent metrics in academic setting, enriches the potential of agent performance, while facilitating awareness of sustainability education across different disciples of sciences.
Impacts of Tourism on the New Designs in European Historic Areas of Istanbul, Turkey
Virtual Lightning Talk Sahba Tavakoli
Historic environments are the physical memories of history and protecting their identity needs careful considerations. Today, in the age of technology and smart cities, historic urban environments transform while facing the contemporary patterns of life. Importance of preserving these environments has become more obvious during the recent years, as they are being more negatively affected by the factors such as destruction, density pressure, functional changes, economic dynamics, and tourism. Despite the natural process of destruction, other factors emerge from the changing taste of decision makers for more financial benefits in the tourism market. Tourism breathes a new life into historic environments, but demolishing the identity of these areas by specific new constructions is a concern. Istanbul, the most touristic city of Turkey, is divided into European and Asian parts. Millions of tourists visit the European part of Istanbul each year, so, numerous hotel brands compete for attracting more guests by the most impressive design in this historic urban environment. This is a qualitative literature-based research which focuses on the selected hotels as new designs in European historic areas of Istanbul, Turkey to evaluate their architectural design in the historical context.
