John Motloch - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by John Motloch
This paper addresses the change from earth as self-managing ecosystem operating within local limi... more This paper addresses the change from earth as self-managing ecosystem operating within local limits and natural laws, to a human-dominated ecosystem where people falsely believe they live outside natural limits and laws. It reviews the shift from low-technology and regional-economics to advanced technologies and globalization whose impacts exceed nature's ability to regenerate and that render the earth incapable of self-management. It calls for a shift from the present source-to-waste paradigm to one that promotes system regeneration; and for environmental management essential to a sustainable future. The paper reviews major built-environment impacts; and the absence in the planning and design professions of defensible processes that interconnect decisions to the health and sustainability of local and contextual ecosystems. It also addresses the lack of recognized methodologies to assess whether "sustainable" planning and design decisions facilitate ecosystem regeneration or, conversely, degrade contextual ecosystems. This paper presents a model for designing built-sites that seek to sustain ecobalance; and for monitoring ecosystem indicators to assess whether decisions achieve this goal. It reviews application of this model to the site of Ball State University's proposed environmental education building and landlab green technology demonstration site (FSEEC-LandLab) as the university's first proposed green built-site. This application includes: 1) resource-balance as an initial site decision management tool, 2) GIS database development to facilitate design that sustains resource-balance, 3) proposed management systems for the overall site and its built-zone, 4) a decision framework of built-site goals, objectives, and guidelines, 5) a proposed feedback system of ecological indicators, baselines, benchmarks, and monitoring to determine the degree to which site-based management, planning, and design sustain resource-balance, 6) initial indicators, monitoring hierarchy, and monitoring station locations, and 7) proposed initial resource-balancing projects to build and monitor.
Arisitidis a Karaletsou C and Tsoukala K Socio Environmental Metamorphoses Chalkidikik Greece 11 14 July 1992, 1992
This paper applies systems management and man-environment approaches to redefine urban planning a... more This paper applies systems management and man-environment approaches to redefine urban planning and design as the management of ecological, physiological and psychological health. It addresses consistency and variability in human needs, motivations, preference and emotional response. It develops planning and design approaches, theories and models responsive to variable needs and perceptions. This paper presents a process for determining strategies for urbanization and affordable housing delivery. It addresses global apartheid, and unique opportunities for metamorphosis in the emerging South Africa, as it implements paradigmatic cultural change through evolving equilibrium structures. It applies metamodeling and metabolic planning and design theories, to address rapid urbanization and community-building, discover implementation roadblocks and gaps, and identify "change triggers". It presents consensus-building, conflict-resolution delivery models designed for South Africa's decision-making environments, developed from a systems management and community-participation approach. These models include an Universal Innovation-Intervention Delivery Model; evolutions to deliver appropriate decision-making environments, delivery structures and development patterns: and evolutions for retrofitting urban subcomponents. This paper benefits from case-study testing of one subcomponent model, the Formal-Informal Community Interface Model, to determine implementability in the emerging South Africa; and to identify implementation roadblocks, and potential "change triggers". It addresses applicability of models to other rapidly changing first- and third-world countries.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2019
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2010
Sustainable development (SD) integrates growth with contextual systems such as environmental, soc... more Sustainable development (SD) integrates growth with contextual systems such as environmental, social and economic, and with the elements and dynamics that characterise them. SD depends on an education for sustainability (EFS) that includes a focus on maintaining growth that promotes successful systems management and that pursues responsible planning and design of system elements (cities, buildings and landscapes) in ways that sustain a positive ecobalance. This paper reviews an EFS initiative and partnering framework, The US-Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC), which integrates local and global knowledge to understand place-based systems, resource flows and ecobalance. The USBSC is a student mobility consortium funded by the US and Brazilian departments of education. It promotes the international exchange of students in architecture, engineering and civil building, landscape architecture, urban planning and natural resources and environmental management. It educates these students about the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability, environmental responsibility, social justice and economic vitality.
MANUSYA, 2009
This study is intended to analyze and describe the relationship between the quality of spirituali... more This study is intended to analyze and describe the relationship between the quality of spirituality and the quality of sustainability through the study of residential community developments in the real estate sector. Based on integral theories, this study explores three communities globally and three communities in Thailand. According to the data, gained mainly from in-depth interviews, questionnaires and observation, the findings show that an integral transformation towards a higher degree of sustainability has occurred, which embraces a spiritual, behavioral, cultural, social and environmental dimension. The findings also show that spiritual transformation has been the primary factor enabling this occurrence. Accordingly, this study offers suggestions for facilitating a transformation towards integral sustainability.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2006
This paper reports on Ball State University's activities in the area of education for sustainabil... more This paper reports on Ball State University's activities in the area of education for sustainability and current activities to develop an Internetbased Introduction to Sustainability course. As the course will be Internet-based, it will mesh well with and can serve as the introductory course in the sustainability curriculum of Ball State University Land Design Institute's international network of Sustainability Consortia, and can be used in sustainability education programs within the context of other international partnerships. This course will serve as a foundation for that effort and for a broader curriculum that can be delivered across cultures. Ball State University's Clustered Minors in Environmentally Sustainable Practices utilizes three courses to address the social, environmental, and economic aspects of sustainability: environmental ethics; ecology; and environmental economics. The intention is to compose a course comprising elements from all three dimensions. The course will include Internet content and assignments and will exploit the emerging ability for Internet-based teleconferencing for real-time interactions among students and faculty at diverse international sites.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2018
Three entries in this encyclopedia serve as a trilogy that interconnects co-design, sustainable d... more Three entries in this encyclopedia serve as a trilogy that interconnects co-design, sustainable development, complex systems, and a wholesystems approach to sustainability. This entry helps build a whole-systems understanding of sustainability. Another entry of the trilogy-Complex Systems and Sustainable Developmentaddresses complex systems (using a complexity theory approach) and the relationship of complexity and sustainable development. The other entry of the trilogy-Co-Design Methods and Sustainable Developmentfocuses on the ongoing transformations in design methods and sustainable development. Definition of Whole-Systems Approach This entry introduces and defines a whole-systems approach to sustainability as viewed through the perspective of complex adaptive systems. Looking through this lens, a whole-systems approach appreciates the co-adapted relationships existing among the entities that constitute these systems, including both physical and behavioral co-adaptation. It appreciates the need to sustain the deep interconnectivity of these systems and their ability to co-adapt with broader system change. The whole-systems approach seeks to appreciate and collaborate in complex adaptive system functionality, sustainability, and regeneration.
Explores proposed global network of Sustainable Living & Growing Centers (SLGC) as regional Energ... more Explores proposed global network of Sustainable Living & Growing Centers (SLGC) as regional EnergyWaterFoodNexus (EWFN) Management Catalysts and as seeds for growing resource-effective networks of self-reliant, thriving communities. Each SLGC is a regional production-teaching-research-demonstration center built on an ECSIA® technology-based food production platform. In each regional SLGC, people learn to thrive by collaborating with their local complex system. The pilot SLGC -- Baltimore Urban Farmstead -- is being launched as a production- education-research-demonstration center for learning-by-doing how to live within regional complex adaptive systems; and for generating, applying, managing, and diffusing knowledge needed to transform dysfunctional ecological and social landscapes into fully-functional complex eco-social-economic systems. In this pilot SLGC people will learn to live in systems and to make whole-system decisions, in rural and urban contexts, that empower communi...
Takes a Big History view of complexity, informatics and cybernetics. Through this lens, presents ... more Takes a Big History view of complexity, informatics and cybernetics. Through this lens, presents Big Science, complex adaptive systems (CAS), CAS operational modes, and current massive and escalating CAS change as indicators of emergence and transformation. Calls for complex adaptive system management and complex system co-design as collaboration among diverse human and non-human intelligences, from ecological to digital. Speaks to emerging potentials for the sciences of complexity, informatics and cybernetics in this unique time in Big History as humanity shifts from opaque decisions and hierarchical messaging to transparent network conversations and co-design with complexity.
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2015
This book’s major contribution to applying scientific knowledge to address complex problems is ti... more This book’s major contribution to applying scientific knowledge to address complex problems is timely, as these problems are proliferating due in part to a history of reductive science, and because scientific thinking is changing rapidly. I appreciate the book’s motivating question: BHow can academic research enhance its contribution to addressing widespread poverty, global climate change, organized crime, escalating health care costs or the myriad of other major problems facing human society.^ I support the author’s focus on interdisciplinary thinking and her concern that interdisciplinary research remains at academic margins because it lacks substantial, wellestablished, internationally accepted methodology. I agree with her expressed need for methodological soundness, greater interaction among diverse groups, and managing of unknowns to help realize the potential of interdisciplinary research. The book proposes a framework grounded in theory, relevant research, broad exchange of ideas, and collection and evaluation of methodologies. It makes four arguments: a specific focus is required; research embracing multiple methods constitutes a style called integrative applied research; a new discipline, Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S), can be an effective way to document and transmit integrative applied research concepts and methods; and given that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, the process should be accelerated through a Big Science-type project of the scale and power of the Human Genome Project. The book seeks to propose a structure for the I2S discipline, plant the seed for an I2S Development Drive as a new Big Science-type project to establish I2S, and start a worldwide discussion about I2S and the I2S Development Drive. This review is informed by my 40+-year evolving focus on systems, general systems theory, systems science, complexity science, and design science. In the review that follows, I first discuss each of the book’s four arguments in relation to object-, system-, and meta-levels of systems engagement. Agreeing strongly that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, I then discuss the system-level at which the challenge can best be addressed, as well as the nature and urgency of the challenge, from a complexity science perspective. Argument #1, TAKING A SPECIFIC FOCUS, targets research involving experts from multiple disciplines investigating common complex real-world social and environmental problems. By focusing on problems, this argument engages systems at the objectand system-level, in ways that help practitioners make more integrated and implementationinformed decisions. I see this argument focusing on symptomatic problems of complex systems whose functionality has been degraded, but not the meta-level engagement needed to re-empower complex systems to fully regenerate, co-adapt, and complexify. Argument #2, DEFINING A NEW RESEARCH STYLE; INTEGRATIVE APPLIED RESEARCH, seeks to identify unknowns, embrace multiple types of knowledge, and appreciate diverse methodologies. This focus helps diverse disciplines broaden their perceptions of problems, encourages processes to have methodological flexibility, and helps integrate diverse
International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, 2016
This paper begins with the Big History story of complexity emerging through cycles of innovation ... more This paper begins with the Big History story of complexity emerging through cycles of innovation and co-adaptation and humanity's role in this story. It addresses the current compromised status of complex adaptive systems, and potential for complexity science to re-empower these systems. It calls for a Big Science Project and Research Agenda that addresses symptomatic problems and the causal problem of loss of system co-adaptation needed to sustain complexity. Due to urgency, it calls for research and implementation that simultaneously promotes collaboration and co-adaptation at the scale and speed needed, while also addressing today's profound problems and need to re-provision the planet and humanity for a sustainable future. The paper has a meta-level focus on re-empowering complex adaptive systems by closing life-cycle loops, increasing process-level biomimicry, and other actions that increase whole-system health and resilience. It calls for systemic change that includes optimizing the energy-water-food nexus, bio-remediating hydrocarbon residuals, re-empowering resource cycles, replacing fossil-fuel and chemical-based agriculture with clean energy produced organic food and human behavior that interconnects more deeply with the complex adaptive system. The paper proposes a global network of centers and institutes where people learn to thrive into the future by collaborating with complex adaptive systems. It addresses these education-research-demonstration centers for learning and research focused on generating, applying, managing, and diffusing knowledge to transform dysfunctional ecological and social landscapes into fully-functional complex eco-social systems.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2018
Revista Tecnologia e Sociedade, 2009
Sustainable development (SD) integrates development with contextual systems (environmental, socia... more Sustainable development (SD) integrates development with contextual systems (environmental, social, and economic) and with the elements and dynamics that characterize these systems. SD depends on an education for sustainability (EFS) that includes a focus on sustainable development that promotes successful systems management, and that pursues responsible planning and design of system elements (cities, buildings, and landscapes) in ways that sustain a positive ecobalance. This paper reviews an EFS initiative and partnering framework-The US-Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC)that integrates local and global knowledge to understand place-based systems, resource flows, and ecobalance. The USBSC is a student mobility consortium funded by the US and Brazilian departments of education. It promotes the international exchange of students in architecture, engineering and civil building, landscape architecture, urban planning, and natural resources and environmental management. It educates these students about the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability-environmental responsibility, social justice and economic vitality.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2007
This paper addresses the change from earth as self-managing ecosystem operating within local limi... more This paper addresses the change from earth as self-managing ecosystem operating within local limits and natural laws, to a human-dominated ecosystem where people falsely believe they live outside natural limits and laws. It reviews the shift from low-technology and regional-economics to advanced technologies and globalization whose impacts exceed nature's ability to regenerate and that render the earth incapable of self-management. It calls for a shift from the present source-to-waste paradigm to one that promotes system regeneration; and for environmental management essential to a sustainable future. The paper reviews major built-environment impacts; and the absence in the planning and design professions of defensible processes that interconnect decisions to the health and sustainability of local and contextual ecosystems. It also addresses the lack of recognized methodologies to assess whether "sustainable" planning and design decisions facilitate ecosystem regeneration or, conversely, degrade contextual ecosystems. This paper presents a model for designing built-sites that seek to sustain ecobalance; and for monitoring ecosystem indicators to assess whether decisions achieve this goal. It reviews application of this model to the site of Ball State University's proposed environmental education building and landlab green technology demonstration site (FSEEC-LandLab) as the university's first proposed green built-site. This application includes: 1) resource-balance as an initial site decision management tool, 2) GIS database development to facilitate design that sustains resource-balance, 3) proposed management systems for the overall site and its built-zone, 4) a decision framework of built-site goals, objectives, and guidelines, 5) a proposed feedback system of ecological indicators, baselines, benchmarks, and monitoring to determine the degree to which site-based management, planning, and design sustain resource-balance, 6) initial indicators, monitoring hierarchy, and monitoring station locations, and 7) proposed initial resource-balancing projects to build and monitor.
Arisitidis a Karaletsou C and Tsoukala K Socio Environmental Metamorphoses Chalkidikik Greece 11 14 July 1992, 1992
This paper applies systems management and man-environment approaches to redefine urban planning a... more This paper applies systems management and man-environment approaches to redefine urban planning and design as the management of ecological, physiological and psychological health. It addresses consistency and variability in human needs, motivations, preference and emotional response. It develops planning and design approaches, theories and models responsive to variable needs and perceptions. This paper presents a process for determining strategies for urbanization and affordable housing delivery. It addresses global apartheid, and unique opportunities for metamorphosis in the emerging South Africa, as it implements paradigmatic cultural change through evolving equilibrium structures. It applies metamodeling and metabolic planning and design theories, to address rapid urbanization and community-building, discover implementation roadblocks and gaps, and identify "change triggers". It presents consensus-building, conflict-resolution delivery models designed for South Africa's decision-making environments, developed from a systems management and community-participation approach. These models include an Universal Innovation-Intervention Delivery Model; evolutions to deliver appropriate decision-making environments, delivery structures and development patterns: and evolutions for retrofitting urban subcomponents. This paper benefits from case-study testing of one subcomponent model, the Formal-Informal Community Interface Model, to determine implementability in the emerging South Africa; and to identify implementation roadblocks, and potential "change triggers". It addresses applicability of models to other rapidly changing first- and third-world countries.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2019
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
Landscape and Urban Planning, 1995
International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2010
Sustainable development (SD) integrates growth with contextual systems such as environmental, soc... more Sustainable development (SD) integrates growth with contextual systems such as environmental, social and economic, and with the elements and dynamics that characterise them. SD depends on an education for sustainability (EFS) that includes a focus on maintaining growth that promotes successful systems management and that pursues responsible planning and design of system elements (cities, buildings and landscapes) in ways that sustain a positive ecobalance. This paper reviews an EFS initiative and partnering framework, The US-Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC), which integrates local and global knowledge to understand place-based systems, resource flows and ecobalance. The USBSC is a student mobility consortium funded by the US and Brazilian departments of education. It promotes the international exchange of students in architecture, engineering and civil building, landscape architecture, urban planning and natural resources and environmental management. It educates these students about the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability, environmental responsibility, social justice and economic vitality.
MANUSYA, 2009
This study is intended to analyze and describe the relationship between the quality of spirituali... more This study is intended to analyze and describe the relationship between the quality of spirituality and the quality of sustainability through the study of residential community developments in the real estate sector. Based on integral theories, this study explores three communities globally and three communities in Thailand. According to the data, gained mainly from in-depth interviews, questionnaires and observation, the findings show that an integral transformation towards a higher degree of sustainability has occurred, which embraces a spiritual, behavioral, cultural, social and environmental dimension. The findings also show that spiritual transformation has been the primary factor enabling this occurrence. Accordingly, this study offers suggestions for facilitating a transformation towards integral sustainability.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2006
This paper reports on Ball State University's activities in the area of education for sustainabil... more This paper reports on Ball State University's activities in the area of education for sustainability and current activities to develop an Internetbased Introduction to Sustainability course. As the course will be Internet-based, it will mesh well with and can serve as the introductory course in the sustainability curriculum of Ball State University Land Design Institute's international network of Sustainability Consortia, and can be used in sustainability education programs within the context of other international partnerships. This course will serve as a foundation for that effort and for a broader curriculum that can be delivered across cultures. Ball State University's Clustered Minors in Environmentally Sustainable Practices utilizes three courses to address the social, environmental, and economic aspects of sustainability: environmental ethics; ecology; and environmental economics. The intention is to compose a course comprising elements from all three dimensions. The course will include Internet content and assignments and will exploit the emerging ability for Internet-based teleconferencing for real-time interactions among students and faculty at diverse international sites.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2018
Three entries in this encyclopedia serve as a trilogy that interconnects co-design, sustainable d... more Three entries in this encyclopedia serve as a trilogy that interconnects co-design, sustainable development, complex systems, and a wholesystems approach to sustainability. This entry helps build a whole-systems understanding of sustainability. Another entry of the trilogy-Complex Systems and Sustainable Developmentaddresses complex systems (using a complexity theory approach) and the relationship of complexity and sustainable development. The other entry of the trilogy-Co-Design Methods and Sustainable Developmentfocuses on the ongoing transformations in design methods and sustainable development. Definition of Whole-Systems Approach This entry introduces and defines a whole-systems approach to sustainability as viewed through the perspective of complex adaptive systems. Looking through this lens, a whole-systems approach appreciates the co-adapted relationships existing among the entities that constitute these systems, including both physical and behavioral co-adaptation. It appreciates the need to sustain the deep interconnectivity of these systems and their ability to co-adapt with broader system change. The whole-systems approach seeks to appreciate and collaborate in complex adaptive system functionality, sustainability, and regeneration.
Explores proposed global network of Sustainable Living & Growing Centers (SLGC) as regional Energ... more Explores proposed global network of Sustainable Living & Growing Centers (SLGC) as regional EnergyWaterFoodNexus (EWFN) Management Catalysts and as seeds for growing resource-effective networks of self-reliant, thriving communities. Each SLGC is a regional production-teaching-research-demonstration center built on an ECSIA® technology-based food production platform. In each regional SLGC, people learn to thrive by collaborating with their local complex system. The pilot SLGC -- Baltimore Urban Farmstead -- is being launched as a production- education-research-demonstration center for learning-by-doing how to live within regional complex adaptive systems; and for generating, applying, managing, and diffusing knowledge needed to transform dysfunctional ecological and social landscapes into fully-functional complex eco-social-economic systems. In this pilot SLGC people will learn to live in systems and to make whole-system decisions, in rural and urban contexts, that empower communi...
Takes a Big History view of complexity, informatics and cybernetics. Through this lens, presents ... more Takes a Big History view of complexity, informatics and cybernetics. Through this lens, presents Big Science, complex adaptive systems (CAS), CAS operational modes, and current massive and escalating CAS change as indicators of emergence and transformation. Calls for complex adaptive system management and complex system co-design as collaboration among diverse human and non-human intelligences, from ecological to digital. Speaks to emerging potentials for the sciences of complexity, informatics and cybernetics in this unique time in Big History as humanity shifts from opaque decisions and hierarchical messaging to transparent network conversations and co-design with complexity.
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2015
This book’s major contribution to applying scientific knowledge to address complex problems is ti... more This book’s major contribution to applying scientific knowledge to address complex problems is timely, as these problems are proliferating due in part to a history of reductive science, and because scientific thinking is changing rapidly. I appreciate the book’s motivating question: BHow can academic research enhance its contribution to addressing widespread poverty, global climate change, organized crime, escalating health care costs or the myriad of other major problems facing human society.^ I support the author’s focus on interdisciplinary thinking and her concern that interdisciplinary research remains at academic margins because it lacks substantial, wellestablished, internationally accepted methodology. I agree with her expressed need for methodological soundness, greater interaction among diverse groups, and managing of unknowns to help realize the potential of interdisciplinary research. The book proposes a framework grounded in theory, relevant research, broad exchange of ideas, and collection and evaluation of methodologies. It makes four arguments: a specific focus is required; research embracing multiple methods constitutes a style called integrative applied research; a new discipline, Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S), can be an effective way to document and transmit integrative applied research concepts and methods; and given that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, the process should be accelerated through a Big Science-type project of the scale and power of the Human Genome Project. The book seeks to propose a structure for the I2S discipline, plant the seed for an I2S Development Drive as a new Big Science-type project to establish I2S, and start a worldwide discussion about I2S and the I2S Development Drive. This review is informed by my 40+-year evolving focus on systems, general systems theory, systems science, complexity science, and design science. In the review that follows, I first discuss each of the book’s four arguments in relation to object-, system-, and meta-levels of systems engagement. Agreeing strongly that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, I then discuss the system-level at which the challenge can best be addressed, as well as the nature and urgency of the challenge, from a complexity science perspective. Argument #1, TAKING A SPECIFIC FOCUS, targets research involving experts from multiple disciplines investigating common complex real-world social and environmental problems. By focusing on problems, this argument engages systems at the objectand system-level, in ways that help practitioners make more integrated and implementationinformed decisions. I see this argument focusing on symptomatic problems of complex systems whose functionality has been degraded, but not the meta-level engagement needed to re-empower complex systems to fully regenerate, co-adapt, and complexify. Argument #2, DEFINING A NEW RESEARCH STYLE; INTEGRATIVE APPLIED RESEARCH, seeks to identify unknowns, embrace multiple types of knowledge, and appreciate diverse methodologies. This focus helps diverse disciplines broaden their perceptions of problems, encourages processes to have methodological flexibility, and helps integrate diverse
International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, 2016
This paper begins with the Big History story of complexity emerging through cycles of innovation ... more This paper begins with the Big History story of complexity emerging through cycles of innovation and co-adaptation and humanity's role in this story. It addresses the current compromised status of complex adaptive systems, and potential for complexity science to re-empower these systems. It calls for a Big Science Project and Research Agenda that addresses symptomatic problems and the causal problem of loss of system co-adaptation needed to sustain complexity. Due to urgency, it calls for research and implementation that simultaneously promotes collaboration and co-adaptation at the scale and speed needed, while also addressing today's profound problems and need to re-provision the planet and humanity for a sustainable future. The paper has a meta-level focus on re-empowering complex adaptive systems by closing life-cycle loops, increasing process-level biomimicry, and other actions that increase whole-system health and resilience. It calls for systemic change that includes optimizing the energy-water-food nexus, bio-remediating hydrocarbon residuals, re-empowering resource cycles, replacing fossil-fuel and chemical-based agriculture with clean energy produced organic food and human behavior that interconnects more deeply with the complex adaptive system. The paper proposes a global network of centers and institutes where people learn to thrive into the future by collaborating with complex adaptive systems. It addresses these education-research-demonstration centers for learning and research focused on generating, applying, managing, and diffusing knowledge to transform dysfunctional ecological and social landscapes into fully-functional complex eco-social systems.
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2018
Revista Tecnologia e Sociedade, 2009
Sustainable development (SD) integrates development with contextual systems (environmental, socia... more Sustainable development (SD) integrates development with contextual systems (environmental, social, and economic) and with the elements and dynamics that characterize these systems. SD depends on an education for sustainability (EFS) that includes a focus on sustainable development that promotes successful systems management, and that pursues responsible planning and design of system elements (cities, buildings, and landscapes) in ways that sustain a positive ecobalance. This paper reviews an EFS initiative and partnering framework-The US-Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC)that integrates local and global knowledge to understand place-based systems, resource flows, and ecobalance. The USBSC is a student mobility consortium funded by the US and Brazilian departments of education. It promotes the international exchange of students in architecture, engineering and civil building, landscape architecture, urban planning, and natural resources and environmental management. It educates these students about the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability-environmental responsibility, social justice and economic vitality.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2007