Cities as Communities & Transition Town Movement

Cities as Communities

For this week’s blog I decided to watch a video titled “Cities as Communities: Regenerative Community Design.” Mark Lakeman is the speaker in this video and he talks mostly about people living in communities taking their rights back to do what they want in their city. He gave many examples of this happening in Portland Oregon; where the people there are no longer just individuals living next to each other but instead a community unit that can get things done. He gave the example of a meeting place in the middle of a town (showed a postcard of this) and said that a community meeting place needs to be created by the people living there, as opposed to be generated as a product that we can consume; how most of our cities are created today. He talks also about zones, where there are living zones and working zones and they are far from each other. This makes us more reliant on transportation and since they don’t create a mass transport system we are required to buy cars to get from home to work and back. What stood out to me most was when Mark talked about us (the people in communities) do all of the work but believe that we have no power. The rest of his talk seemed to coincide with these thoughts that we need to understand that we do have power to make decisions in our cities. One example is when a community wanted to plant a series of fruit trees in a certain area that wasn’t being used for anything productive. At the time they announced they wanted to start planting these trees the community developer tried to stand in their way saying they did not have the permission to do so. At that time, they responded by saying that they were putting them in and not asking permission but asking for help if the city wanted to. They were able to plant their trees and the city went along with this plan. I really hope to be involved with a movement like this in the future. Anyone who lives in a city pays taxes that cover the expense to keep the city running. Therefore, we are the ones who ultimately own the cities we live in. We absolutely have the right to get together and make meetings places, community gardens, or as stated in the video community orchards if we want. Although I feel there is adequate meeting places in the city I live in, I feel that many of us depend on grocery stores to purchase most if not all our produce. I believe my community would benefit from a garden that we can all use and be involved with creating. I am hoping to speak with people in my community to see if this is something feel they would be interested in getting involved with and will try to keep my blog updated in the future with the progress.

Transition Town Movement

The second video I watched is the “Transition Town Movement” from Rob Hopkins. The video began with people explaining what transition is. The definition that I most relate to was when a woman explained that transition is the idea of thinking of our communities futures and what we would like to see with people being happy, living sustainably, and being involved with decision-making. The idea of transition is trying to figure out how to get to that idea of a perfect community. Transitioning has to happen in stages that way you can not only gain commitment of the followers but also come up with the best solutions by examining the fine details in the plan. It was explained that the biggest transition that needs to be made is from the inside. Anyone growing up in the United States has been brought up to believe that the best thing you can accomplish in your life is to be wealthy so that you can buy whatever your heart desires. This way of thinking is so embedded in our thoughts and actions that we can’t truly transition to a new way of thinking until we address this issue first. We need to understand that money doesn’t buy happiness and you aren’t a more successful person if you have the ability to consume more products than the next guy. Instead we need to build rich communities, ones in which people feel connected and you can rely on others for help just as they can rely on you. We need to get our sense of community back and really try to connect with others around us to come up with solutions to the problems in our lives, and not leave it to the so-called “experts.” The second stage of transition is deepening, and this is where you start becoming an organization. One group in Kilburn decided to plant an apple tree and various other vegetables at a train platform. When they initially asked if they could plant food there the city said they would prefer if they just planted flowers. After being persistent they found out that it was written in the code that they would be allowed to plant food there and that is what they did. One of the most important things that needs to take place after a group has success is to celebrate this success before jumping into the next project. These celebrations might encourage others to get involved in the transition and also is a way for people to see all of the hard work that they have put in. This video was very much related to the first video I watched for this blog and overall I feel encouraged to get involved and see what I can do to help in my local community.

March Against Monsanto

March Against Monsanto

This past weekend I participated in a protest called March Against Monsanto. Monsanto is the largest company in the world that produces genetically engineered seeds. These seeds are modified to resist pesticides that are sprayed on it. How this works is that the company plants these modified seeds, then while they are growing, they are sprayed with pesticides (Round Up) and because the seeds have been modified everything dies around the plant except the plant itself. Once these crops are harvested we ingest left over pesticides. Also, over the years the weeds adapt to resist the pesticide. Monsanto then needs to come up with stronger and stronger pesticides and seeds that can resist these new sprays. It is a vicious cycle and unfortunately we are the ones who are ingesting these toxic foods from not just our fruits and vegetables but also from our meats. Many of the livestock that we consume eat the genetically modified plants that Monsanto helps grow, so even if we buy organic fruits and veggies we still may be eating these GMO’s through other sources. Overall, the protest was to bring awareness to these facts and we are trying to get Monsanto’s attention to make a change. We are starting to see the long term side effects from ingesting GMO’s and want companies like Monsanto to change the way in which they plan to feed the worlds people. While at the protest there were several speakers, one in particular was a person they called Captain Charlie. While many of the speakers talked about the GMO’s and how it effects our bodies Captain Charlie went a different route. He spoke about people getting the power back to grow their own foods and not having to rely on large corporations for everything we want in life. Many of the things he spoke about (systems way of thinking about our food sources, giving power back to communities, etc.) are the same ideas I hear from my professor. I enjoyed the protest and met quite a few nice people in the process. I was also pleased to see the amount of people who came out and brought their children with them to join in with the fight against Monsanto. I hope to attend every year and get others involved in the future. Below are some of the photos of people I met at this protest.

Voices of the Founders & Cities

Voices of the Founders

Recently I read the 2^nd Chapter of a book called Illusions of Opportunity. What this chapter mostly talked about was the way in which the founding fathers of the United States wanted to set up their democracy. Mainly they wanted people to have the opportunity to be able to make a living for themselves and be successful. In this they promoted working hard to get the things you want, what we now call “The American Dream.” Unfortunately, the book showed that even in the beginning some of these men were doing things that were making them wealthier by having others do their work for them. They were not practicing what they were preaching in a sense and because of this “The American Dream,” was built upon lies. I have to agree with what the author is saying in that it is imbedded in American Culture to believe that we all have equal opportunity, but in reality many people will never be able to escape from their impoverished lives. Opportunity is not equal, and this is very prevalent in the working world. Often people who are hired at the most desirable of companies know a person working there or have a connection through some personal source. These companies continue to hire the same types of people from the same backgrounds and often not allowing others the opportunity to even interview. Unfortunately, many American’s don’t see that this is the case and still believe there is such a thing as “The American Dream.”

Cities

I also read the 2^nd chapter of a book called Cities and the Wealth of Nations. The chapter talked about how cities are formed and the way the economy works. What stood out most to me in this chapter was where the author talked about a man that gave a speech at a funeral. The funeral was held in Atlanta, Georgia but everything that was being used in the funeral was from other parts of the country. Some of the items that the man listed included: marble from Vermont, a pine coffin from Cincinnati, nails and screws and even the shovel used to dig the hole came from Pittsburg, etc. What was being pointed out was the fact that we rely on so many other places to produce products that we can make for ourselves. In this way we can become more self-reliant. When I was reflecting on this chapter I started to look at the tags from the various clothing items I own, the blankets and towels I use, and even the computer I’m using to write this blog. I was unable to find even one item that was produced in the United States. Obviously, having the ability to purchase and use products from various other countries allows us to take advantage of competitive pricing as well as a wealth of variety. However, I believe it would be in the best interest of all people to be able to produce some items locally. This will increase jobs, allow us to become self-sustaining, and support our local communities. I enjoyed the readings this week and hope you liked my thoughts on these topics.

RIP! A Remix Manifesto & Nature Vs Nurture

RIP! A Remix Manifesto

Recently, I watched a documentary titled, “RIP! A Remix Manifesto.” The video was about copyright laws and how they have evolved over time in our society. In the beginning, copyright law was intended to encourage people to create. It would allow for new works of art in varying forms to be legally protected. Today, however, the copyright laws have gotten so out of hand that people are restricted from using pieces of other people’s work to create something entirely different. The example that was used throughout the documentary was a one man band, Gregg Gillis who is also known as Girl Talk. Gregg Gillis takes pieces of popular music and mixes them in new ways sometimes only using one line from certain songs. By using other peoples work to create his “mashups” he is breaking the copyright law because he would need to pay and get permission from the artists to do this legally. I agree and disagree with what was said in this documentary. I believe that it would be unfair for someone to steal your idea and be able to profit from it, but I also believe that the laws are restricting the creativity of people. One line that really stood out to me in the documentary is when they stated that corporations represent the copyright, and people in the public are called the copyleft because they believe in the exchange of ideas freely. Although I may agree with some of the ideas in the film, I am aware that laws in our country are purposely very hard to change, and that copyright laws are not going anywhere.

Nature Vs Nurture

The next video I watched was Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. This video spoke mostly about the great debate of nature versus nurture. What stood out most to me in this film was when they were talking about how peoples inherit characteristics are shaped not from our genes but how we have lived our lives. One doctor in particular was talking about the people he deals with on a regular basis in his work; primarily rapists, murders, and people who are known for violent acts. Based off of studies done with people who turn to violence as adults, these terrible acts are carried out by people who were abused as children. Another example they gave was from the Dutch Hunger Winter. This is where in 1944 when the Nazi’s occupied Holland and took all the food and diverted it to Germany. What the study was about was that if you were a second or third trimester fetus your body learned to be stingy with sugar and fat and that you end up storing every bit of it. Half a century later if you were one of these Dutch Hunger babies, you were more likely to have high blood pressure and obesity. Although I understand the importance of taking care of your body while pregnant, I never knew that something that happened while you were a fetus would have such long term effects like this. I have always believed that it isn’t entirely nature or nurture that makes humans act the way that they do, that it is a mix of the two. This video is swaying more to the nurture aspect as opposed to nature; I agree with most of their statements but also believe that some things shape the way we are because of our chemical makeup as well.

IAT & Cultural Creatives

IAT and Our Subconscious Minds

Recently I participated in a number of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to see what types of thoughts I held subconsciously on various topics. I took one IAT test with regards to being tan or light skinned and which one was more desirable to me subconsciously. For this test, my results were that I moderately believe tan skin was better than having lighter toned skin. Let me start by saying, I feel that these tests can be somewhat skewed. The process is that they first show you images of either tan or light skinned women and require you to put them in the correct categories. They then make you categorize words into positive for tan and negative for light skinned and vice versa. From here you are to categorize these words and photos as fast as you can. The reason why I felt this test was skewed was that you get so used to associating one image with positive or negative (because they make you) that when they ask you to reverse your thinking it can be difficult to get the right answers. Overall, I felt like I was trying to memorize which was which as opposed to answering honestly about how I felt. Maybe that’s the trick though. The importance of the test is to show that we automatically make assumptions about people and things in our daily lives. What would be best for us as individuals is to realize these assumptions and if they are negative to a particular group, we should really look at these thoughts subjectively than assume they are correct. Many of the other students that participated in the study on race felt ashamed from their results because they either subconsciously associated good or bad thoughts to either white or black people. I feel that participating in studies like these shows us ways in which we may feel influenced to like one group over another. By understanding our subconscious mind, we may be able to influence ourselves to try to be more neutral in our thoughts overall. The road to equality is first understand and admitting that people are not treated equally.

Cultural Creatives

I read the first chapter of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World. This whole first chapter attempted to identify who Cultural Creatives are and how they participate in making the world a better place for all. The book gave the definition of a Cultural Creative as, “the ones who invented the current interest in personal authenticity in America. Authenticity means that your actions are consistent with what you believe and what you say.” This is so very important to me as a person because I take pride in knowing that my actions follow the words I speak and I never want them to contradict one another. The more I read about Cultural Creatives the more I see that my feelings and beliefs are in line with theirs. One part of the first chapter that stood out to me was where the author spoke about the importance of women. In the reading it stated that, “in all of the Cultural Creatives’ concerns, women are leading the way.” This is because many of the people who would be called a Cultural Creative hold certain “women’s issues” near and dear to their heart. An example of “women’s issues” include: feeling empathy and sympathy for others, taking the viewpoint of the one who speaks, seeing personal experiences and first-persons stories as important ways of learning, and embracing an ethic of caring. I feel that people who possess these qualities are the people I would like to associate with. Often women are given a hard time for their feelings and are looked at as being weaker because of them. I personally believe the opposite; it is very easy to ignore others feelings and be selfish, it takes a strong person to put themselves in another’s shoes and try to understand from another viewpoint. As usual, I enjoyed all of the activities and readings assigned this week and look forward to what I will be shown next.

Peter Senge Lecture

Peter Senge

Recently, I went to a speech that was given by Dr. Peter Senge at Ursa Minor on the Cal Poly Pomona Campus. Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is known in the business world for his approach to systems thinking. Dr. Senge spoke about systems thinking and how he is part of a team that is attempting to bring systems thinking to kids. There are approximately 22 schools that have implemented programs to teach children about this new way of thinking. What stood out to me most in this lecture was when he showed a video of three boys that had just been fighting minutes before. The kids in the video were aged from about 7-9 and were “problem children” as he put it. The video showed the three boys creating a systems model for their behavior. They showed the degenerative system where one boy would say something negative about another boy, then that boy’s feelings would get hurt in turn causing them to begin fighting regardless of an apology. One of the boys stated “this just isn’t going to work; we have to think of a new system for it to work.” They then decided that it was best just to say nice things, and apologize when disagreements arouse instead of beginning to fight. I was truly in awe by this video and couldn’t believe that such young children understood systems thinking better than I can. I believe that we should start implementing a systems building model in all schools and require children to go through the same exercises as these boys when problems arise. Sending children to detention doesn’t teach them any sort of lesson, suspension is even worse. By encouraging children to think of the mistakes they made and assisting them with developing models of better behavior, some children may truly begin to change their negative actions to that of positive ones. Overall, I enjoyed the lecture by Dr. Senge and hope to attend another one in the future.

The Next Industrial Revolution & Here Comes Everybody!

The Next Industrial Revolution

I read an article on Wired.com from Chris Anderson about what he is calling the Next Industrial Revolution. Chris mostly spoke about the ways in which people today are creating micro-manufacturing plants. This is where they outsource most of their manufacturing in places like China or invest in 3D printers that can make their products on the fly at their shops. What stood out most to me in this article were the words that Chris was using to explain the next Industrial Revolution. He spoke about democratizing big industries, crowd sourcing, and open source. He believes that when transformative change happens, industries democratize; meaning that the ability to create and improve is stripped from large companies and the government and is instead in the hands of regular people. He gave the example of the internet and the way in which people have taken over the communications industry by publishing and broadcasting over a massive scale. He also mentioned crowdsourcing, where multiple people bring their ideas to the table and choose what will work best among them. I feel this is such an important aspect of the entire article and what Chris was trying to point out. He believes, and I agree, that with more minds being able to pull their ideas together they can create something (in his example, the Rally Fighter car) that is better than what we could necessarily achieve from some big corporation. He speaks about people working together on big projects and the ability to use open sourced software that can be improved and fixed when problems arise. The Next Industrial Revolution is a time in which people will begin to get their power back; they won’t have to rely on their government or corporations to produce the products and designs that they need for the future.

Here Comes Everybody!

I read the first chapter of the book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. In this first chapter we are introduced to the idea of self-organization. A Japanese scientists named Toshiyuki Nakagaki put slime mold in a maze with two paths that led to a food source. The slime mold was able to navigate through the maze, choosing the shortest path to make it to the food source. What is most incredible about this phenomenon is that slime mold only exists in certain conditions and seems to disappear when those conditions are not met. The book posed the question, “Has it wandered off to some other part of the forest? Or somehow vanished into thin air?” What the study found was that “when the environment is less hospitable, the slime mold acts as a single organism; when the weather turns cooler and the mold enjoys a large food supply, “it” becomes a “they.” The reason why this activity is so important to scientist all over is that they were unable to find any “host” cells or management type cells that tell the slime mold to come together as one. This system is run from the “bottom-up” approach, where the individuals decide to come together without being told to do so. Overall, the first chapter of this book tries to bring to light that nature orders itself, and for us to achieve a common goal we should do the same. We can’t always rely on our government or some outside entity to handle the problems we face and should imitate the bottom-up approach to some of the issues we are faced with.

Biomimicry

Biomimicry – Janine Benyus

I watched a total of three videos, each approximately twenty minutes long where Janine Benyus talked about biomimicry. She believes that we can mimic structures we see in nature to create useful products that work closely with our natural world. One topic that stood out to me is the use of 3D printers. Generally in our manufacturing systems people take materials and cut away from them to make the products we need. This creates waste and ends up depleting natural resources in the process. Instead Janine is pioneering for the use of additive manufacturing. This is where we figure out what product we need and layer by layer build it. In this way, we have theoretically no waste. She also spoke about using common polymers that exist in any ecosystem and layering this same material in different ways. This will allow us to create structures from one material and give them color, structure, breath-ability, and be abrasion resistant just by the way we layer them. She later spoke about using the “recipe” or “blueprints” from nature to create products that we will use every day. The example she used for this idea are the wings of a dragonfly mimicked to create durable types of plastic. This type of plastic made from polymers is biodegradable so it can return to nature after its life. I really enjoyed the thoughts and ideas that she expressed in these videos. I feel that it would be beneficial for people to continue research on these topics and start utilizing these ideas in the real world. The overall theme that Janine was trying to display is how human beings can live gracefully on this planet for the long haul. It is no secret that we are destroying our natural world, if we adopt these new thoughts and practices of manufacturing we may be able to reverse some of the effects of what we have done.

Damn, Another Ecologist

I also read the first two chapters of the book The Nature of Economies. Many of the ideas that I grasped from this reading are along the same lines of what Janine Benyus was saying about biomimicry. The book begins with mentioning four characters that have differing opinions on nature and the way in which we currently interact with it and possibly the way we should. The character Hiram speaks about the possibility of manufacturing products with life-friendly materials, without toxic chemicals. He went on to say that by imitating nature and its chemistry we can create products that are benign; therefore at the end of their useful life they can be returned to the land and sea. From here was a discussion primarily between Armbruster and Hiram about how economics can be learned from nature. This statement was made by Hiram who stated that development is what brought him to this conclusion. Later in the book Hiram goes on to explain how development can be defined as, “significant qualitative change, usually building up incrementally.” There are three fundamental principles to development, according to Hiram. The first, “development is differentiation emerging from generality.” He chose the example of the solar system. There are astronomers and physicists that believe the solar system is a vast cloud of matter, which is a generality. Then differentiations occurred: the sun, planets and their moons, and various other debris. Then once the Earth emerged as a differentiation, it became a new generality from which further differentiations could emerge. The second principle of development is that differentiations become generalities from which further differentiations emerge. These occur simultaneously in parallel and others in successions. The last principle is that development depends on co-development. Meaning, that development can’t usefully be thought of as a ‘line,’ or even as a collection of opened ended ‘lines.’ Overall, what I was able to grasp from this reading is that there are ways in which we can interact with nature and learn from it. That continuous development is necessary and it happens without our notice or concern. We need to understand development as a means to interact with our natural world. Specifically, “development isn’t a collection of things but rather a process that yields things.” I look forward to reading more about how and for what reason we have so many developments. Also, how we may change some of these new developments to work better in our world as opposed to stripping it of something.

Science for the Future and The New Science of Sustainability

                 Science for the future

Trying to think systematically when it comes to the big problems we face in our world is difficult; but, people like Dr. Khosla from India, (pictured above) are making these topics much easier to grasp. I watched a video that was recorded at UC San Diego where Dr. Khosla spoke about ways we would need to change our infrastructure to be able avoid an inevitable collapse in the future. He started by pointing at our linear way of thinking, that is, that when we think about our economy and how to improve it we often only think of business and technology. In fact, we need to take into account the environment and social issues to truly improve anything in our economy. Each of these factors plays a vital role in each of the others. Next, he talked about the over-consumption that is taking place in America and Japan and mentioned the champagne glass effect (income distribution, where the top 20% have 80-90% of the wealth). Over-consumption is a real problem in American and we are wasting a great deal of energy to move desired products from other parts of the world. Overall, Dr. Khosla was trying to make the point that we need to make major changes if we want to avoid a collapse in the future. We need to change the way we farm, use energy, transportation, and even the way we design our dams and buildings if we want a future in this world. The video had a tremendous amount of information and I would encourage anyone to watch it.

The New Science of Sustainability

To continue my effort of understanding sustainability and using systematic thinking, I read the first chapter of the book The New Science of Sustainability: Building a Foundation for Great Change. The first point that the author makes is that sustainability is not about saving the planet but instead about saving civilization as we know it. For background and easier understanding the author brings up the various changes that society has gone through. These include: Medieval society, where people believed the world worked according to God’s design. Second, the modern society, where we saw a clockwork universe, this is what brought free citizens, presidents, and freedom of religion. Lastly the integral society, which is now pondering the interwoven nature of all things. Specifically, the integral society looks at holistic alternatives in medicine, a renewed concern for community, and the sustainability movement. What I was able to absorb from this reading is that the Darwinian way of thinking (dog-eat-dog) is not necessarily true. That a society who organizes around selfish thoughts, and who turn a blind eye to the corrupt policies that continue to destroy the world we live in, will not be able to continue on for much longer. The new evolution that the author believes we will start accepting is dynamic evolution. “Dynamic evolution encompasses the same facts as Darwinism, but it replaces the old vision of life created by accident and run by selfish genes, with a much more logical and fully physical explanation of how natural dynamics produce the common patterns of emergence, development and adaptive change seen in biological organisms and societal systems.” What the author is trying to portray in this argument is that the world works more like a system where everything is interconnected and the idea of constant competition will eventually be a thing of the past. Fortunately, we now can see the side effects of capitalism, where companies are producing more than what we need and our natural resources are being depleted. I look forward to reading more of this book to see what I can do to help combat the issues we are now faced with.

Sustainability Fair

So this past Friday I attended a sustainability fair that was put on by Scripps College in Claremont. The reason I wanted to go to this event was to see what types of sustainability projects the people there were involved with, and also to network with individuals from different schools. There were stands set up in one of the parks where individuals had set up various demonstrations. There was a clothing exchange at one of the stands, and luckily I was able to participate. This is where you bring clothes that are in good condition and exchange them for items that others have brought. The idea is to find a use for items you no longer want instead of throwing them away.

At another stand, girls from Scripps College were making jam out of oranges from the trees on campus. The oranges were not picked from the tree but instead picked off the ground because these fruits would usually be the ones that are thrown away.

At yet another booth, girls were using these same oranges and dehydrating them in slices to make barrettes.

The last thing that caught my attention was the trash cans set up throughout the park. They usually had a group of three trash cans where one would be for trash, one for recycling, and a last one for compost. I feel this is something we could implement at my school, Cal Poly. Composting is a way that we can reduce the amount of food that heads to the dump and that will allow us to make better soil to grow the plants we want. I feel I learned a lot from this experience and plan to make changes in my own household to reduce the amount of waste I produce.