Better Policy and Practice (Asynchronous Session)
Relational Energy Literacy: Sustainability Education in the Symbiocene View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Derek Gladwin
A 2016 Report from the World Energy Council titled “Innovating Urban Energy” predicts that by 2030 the global footprint will triple in urban areas. Consequently, there is an urgent need to address the ways cities might produce knowledge about their energy use, impact, and relationships. When building energy literacy and the link to urban infrastructures, assemblages, and power structures, we are also speaking about relationality – to each other, to systems, to societies, and to the spaces we inhabit. This paper considers a relational model of the Symbiocene, which cultivates a paradigm of social symbiosis and generative future-making, by exploring approaches to energy literacy within sustainability education.
Sustainable Adaptation: Social Equity and Local Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. Cities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Duran Fiack
Civic leaders have increasingly relied upon local climate adaptation plans to identify vulnerabilities, prioritize goals, and implement actions in order to prepare cities for the present and projected effects of global climate change. The concept of sustainability is central to these efforts, as climate adaptation discussions are often framed within the context of economic resilience, environmental protection, and social vulnerability. For urban centers, the climate change issue presents unique challenges for each of these dimensions, however its potential impacts to marginalized populations are extensive. This study draws from the ‘just sustainabilities’ perspective, and applies the concepts of distributive and procedural justice to examine whether, and to what extent, U.S. cities prioritize social equity concerns in adaptation plans. We perform a qualitative analysis of climate adaptation plans prepared by 22 of the 100 largest U.S. cities. We find that social equity concerns are particularly prominent in local-level climate adaptation discussions, relative to those concerning environmental quality and economic development.
The Future of Dwelling: Right-sizing Towards a New Typology of Living View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Camilo Cerro
The size of a house today in the USA is 1,000 square feet (92m²) larger than what it was in 1971, with all that extra space going partly to free children from having to share a bedroom, to accommodate Americans’ ever growing bulk of material possessions, and to make room for more lavish entertaining. With this size increase there was bound to be a price to pay: The bigger the house the more money, time, energy, and effort one needs to maintain and clean it. A bigger house will be more expensive, producing more debt and risk, its environmental impact is larger because it requires more resources, and once you are ready to sell, a bigger house will have less of a market of people financially able to afford buying it. So, as we start to deal with the results of global warming, we need to ask ourselves, what is the right size for a home? In this paper, I present a series of new housing models that look into socio-economic trends of new modalities of living, influenced by new technologies, a sustainable consciousness, and the need for community development, which altogether produce a housing typology (live/work/farm) re-designed to adapt to the needs of the future.
