Ashwani Vasishth - Ramapo College of New Jersey (original) (raw)

Papers by Ashwani Vasishth

Measuring the effect of sustainability programs on interest in STEM disciplines: a pre-post survey study of the student green team internship program

SN Social Sciences, 2022

Editorial: Transforming livelihoods and lifestyles for the well-being of all: a Peoples' Sustainability Treaty on Consumption and Production

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, 2012

Getting Humans Back Into Nature

Complexity Rising: A Dialogue Emergent from Planning Theory

, edited by Gert de Roo and Elisabete A. Silva, is a welcome addition to our bookshelves. Like mo... more , edited by Gert de Roo and Elisabete A. Silva, is a welcome addition to our bookshelves. Like most edited volumes, some few chapters will endure more than others. And, as is fitting in a field as complex as planning, which chapters work for you will likely differ from those that work for others. What makes the book useful to planners is the sheer range of approaches represented by the chapters of this very European volume. Growing out of a dialogue that began at an Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Conference, and then shaped by conversations amongst participants over the years, the dominant theme is planning theoretic, interwoven with substantial chunks of practical application—to spatial planning, modeling, brownfields and transportation planning. It should be said that this is not an introductory volume to systems thinking or to complexity planning, but rather, a place to come once you know something of the theory and have developed questions that you would like to see answered. It will probably be more useful to planning theorists with some exposure to a

Sustainability, 2015

Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to se... more Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to set us apart from nature. But an ecosystem view from nested scale-hierarchical process-function ecology shows us that cities are best seen as the emergent and nodal end points of interactive flows of matter, energy and information. From within such a view, a clear need emerges to ecologize our cities by better integrating them back with nature. Arguing from such an ecosystem approach to depicting reality, this paper proposes that tracing the processes and functions which constitute the morphology of the city leads us to articulate an urban ecology that incorporates heat island mitigations, urban forestry, and ecological landscape management (taken both as the introduction of native vegetation and the insertion of increased proportions of pervious paving), all considered within the framework of an integrative ecosystem approach to land use planning. More importantly, such an approach to urban ecology is useful because, as a mode of intervention, it rests on-indeed, requires-an acknowledgement in ecological planning of the often amorphous and usually only indirectly sensible atmospheric, biogeochemical and hydrological processes and functions.

International Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources, 2017

I first encountered the work of Drs. Daly, Costanza, Perrings, et. al. at a time when I had just ... more I first encountered the work of Drs. Daly, Costanza, Perrings, et. al. at a time when I had just committed myself to understanding what it meant to take "an ecosystem approach" in planning. As such I was particularly enthusiastic about a body of work that seemed to give us both an imperative to act, and the means whereby to adjudge the consequences of our actions. It seemed to me Ecological Economics offered both a necessary and sufficient basis upon which to craft a theory of planning. But the more I read in the history and science of ecology, social theory and evolution, the more reservations I found myself making. Briefly put, I began to suspect that Ecological Economics, as a movement, is not particularly ecological, makes little room for evolution, and rests deeply on a hard separation of humans from nature. And yet, there is too much that I find savvy in the economic arguments of Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen and Dr. Daly, and the ecological arguments of Robert Costanza and others. So I would like at least to relocate the sources of my resistance, and present three of these.

Our urban areas desperately needs investment in infrastructure. However, we have come to a place,... more Our urban areas desperately needs investment in infrastructure. However, we have come to a place, removed from nature, where we think of infrastructure rather narrowly. We plan to build with concrete and steel and asphalt, importing electricity and water, exporting waste and pollution, and relying increasingly upon the automobile to carry us about a landscape that we have segmented out into distant and disjointed uses.

Dealing with Technology As A "Wicked" Problem in the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainability, 2020

Call for papers for a special issue of the journal Sustainability. Argues for a decentralized ec... more Call for papers for a special issue of the journal Sustainability. Argues for a decentralized ecosystem approach to urban habitat conservation.

However, the real seeds of progress were sown on the sidelines. A number of events at the People&... more However, the real seeds of progress were sown on the sidelines. A number of events at the People's Summit held the promise of effective citizens' action towards sustainability and equity, building on the past and carrying on into the future. One of these was the initiation of a host of Peoples' Sustainability Treaties, dealing with a range of issues and actions, starting from the very local, going all the way up to the global. The low expectations for the outcomes from formal process suggested that an alternative centre of energy needed to be created. Uchita de Zoysa, a sustainability activist with a history of engagement pre-dating the original Earth Summit in 1992, conceived the idea to develop a set of Peoples' Sustainability Treaties, with the hope to coalesce the thinking of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the direction of a strong social movement towards an alternative and desirable future. The basic idea was to establish a network of Treaties, with each ...

Transforming Livelihoods and Lifestyles for the Well-Being of All: A Peoples' Sustainability Treaty on Consumption and Production

Sustainability Science Practice Policy, Jul 1, 2012

Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (includ... more Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (including notions of invasion, succession, etc.) to account for the growth of urban communities. In this chapter, Vasishth and Sloane reconsider human ecology, and discover merit in a scale-sensitive 'ecosystem approach' to understanding and planning the city. From a stout defense of the Chicago School's legacy, they argue that fundamental categories (such as organism, population, and community) retain their significance. In addition, the ecosystem approach retains the emphasis on place, and this brings back the environment into consideration.

Complex systems, unlike simple systems, embody multiple realities that cannot be reduced to some ... more Complex systems, unlike simple systems, embody multiple realities that cannot be reduced to some comparable set of singularities. Then, decision making protocols under complexity must be crafted to take account of such inherent incommensurability. Plan-making is usefully seen as scenario-building, with multiple stakeholders representing functionally relevant perspectives, with depictions utilizing multiple scales attentive to boundaries across levels of organization. Under complexity, planning becomes the art of constructing information-rich and meaningful depictions of the system of concern, and the development of expertise is best told as the growing of discernment based on the application of attention over time. A sound decision is one that is generated by the application of mindfulness to rich descriptions made from within an ecosystem approach to telling complexity. This paper is best seen as a scoping document, setting the context from within which a participatory, stakeholder...

From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory From Chicago to L.A.: Making sense of Urban theory, 2002

Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (includ... more Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (including notions of invasion, succession, etc.) to account for the growth of urban communities. In this chapter, Vasishth and Sloane reconsider human ecology, and discover merit in a scale-sensitive 'ecosystem approach' to understanding and planning the city. From a stout defense of the Chicago School's legacy, they argue that fundamental categories (such as organism, population, and community) retain their significance. In addition, the ecosystem approach retains the emphasis on place, and this brings back the environment into consideration.

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2012

Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to se... more Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to set us apart from nature. But an ecosystem view from nested scale-hierarchical process-function ecology shows us that cities are best seen as the emergent and nodal end points of interactive flows of matter, energy and information. From within such a view, a clear need emerges to ecologize our cities by better integrating them back with nature. Arguing from such an ecosystem approach to depicting reality, this paper proposes that tracing the processes and functions which constitute the morphology of the city leads us to articulate an urban ecology that incorporates heat island mitigations, urban forestry, and ecological landscape management (taken both as the introduction of native vegetation and the insertion of increased proportions of pervious paving), all considered within the framework of an integrative ecosystem approach to land use planning. More importantly, such an approach to urban ecology is useful because, as a mode of intervention, it rests on—indeed, requires—an acknowledgement in ecological planning of the often amorphous and usually only indirectly sensible atmospheric, biogeochemical and hydrological processes and functions.

We care about systemic change because truly complex socio-ecological systems are often intractabl... more We care about systemic change because truly complex socio-ecological systems are often intractable to the imposition of intentional change. This intractability derives in large part from certain intrinsic properties of complex systems, namely their nested and scale hierarchic structure and the fact that they are comprised, essentially, of processes and functions rather than objects and entities (vasishth 2008). As such, they are harder to “move,” given that they are not things to be pulled or pushed,
shoved or even levered into places we thinkmore appropriate and better suited. Instead, asprocesses and functions, they need to be guided,and channelled, and deflected and cajoled.

Invited intervention on behalf of Civil Society, at the UN General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogu... more Invited intervention on behalf of Civil Society, at the UN General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature
April 22, 2014
Trusteeship Council Chamber, New York

Stakeholder Forum, Jul 9, 2013

Technology is both an obstacle in the path to a sustainable future and the bearer of the promise ... more Technology is both an obstacle in the path to a sustainable future and the bearer of the promise for a new world. For instance, the report by the UN Secretary-General's Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN, 2013), An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development, points to technology as one of the roots of current forms of unsustainable development, but at the same time holds technology up as having the strong potential to show us the way forward.

Measuring the effect of sustainability programs on interest in STEM disciplines: a pre-post survey study of the student green team internship program

SN Social Sciences, 2022

Editorial: Transforming livelihoods and lifestyles for the well-being of all: a Peoples' Sustainability Treaty on Consumption and Production

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, 2012

Getting Humans Back Into Nature

Complexity Rising: A Dialogue Emergent from Planning Theory

, edited by Gert de Roo and Elisabete A. Silva, is a welcome addition to our bookshelves. Like mo... more , edited by Gert de Roo and Elisabete A. Silva, is a welcome addition to our bookshelves. Like most edited volumes, some few chapters will endure more than others. And, as is fitting in a field as complex as planning, which chapters work for you will likely differ from those that work for others. What makes the book useful to planners is the sheer range of approaches represented by the chapters of this very European volume. Growing out of a dialogue that began at an Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Conference, and then shaped by conversations amongst participants over the years, the dominant theme is planning theoretic, interwoven with substantial chunks of practical application—to spatial planning, modeling, brownfields and transportation planning. It should be said that this is not an introductory volume to systems thinking or to complexity planning, but rather, a place to come once you know something of the theory and have developed questions that you would like to see answered. It will probably be more useful to planning theorists with some exposure to a

Sustainability, 2015

Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to se... more Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to set us apart from nature. But an ecosystem view from nested scale-hierarchical process-function ecology shows us that cities are best seen as the emergent and nodal end points of interactive flows of matter, energy and information. From within such a view, a clear need emerges to ecologize our cities by better integrating them back with nature. Arguing from such an ecosystem approach to depicting reality, this paper proposes that tracing the processes and functions which constitute the morphology of the city leads us to articulate an urban ecology that incorporates heat island mitigations, urban forestry, and ecological landscape management (taken both as the introduction of native vegetation and the insertion of increased proportions of pervious paving), all considered within the framework of an integrative ecosystem approach to land use planning. More importantly, such an approach to urban ecology is useful because, as a mode of intervention, it rests on-indeed, requires-an acknowledgement in ecological planning of the often amorphous and usually only indirectly sensible atmospheric, biogeochemical and hydrological processes and functions.

International Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources, 2017

I first encountered the work of Drs. Daly, Costanza, Perrings, et. al. at a time when I had just ... more I first encountered the work of Drs. Daly, Costanza, Perrings, et. al. at a time when I had just committed myself to understanding what it meant to take "an ecosystem approach" in planning. As such I was particularly enthusiastic about a body of work that seemed to give us both an imperative to act, and the means whereby to adjudge the consequences of our actions. It seemed to me Ecological Economics offered both a necessary and sufficient basis upon which to craft a theory of planning. But the more I read in the history and science of ecology, social theory and evolution, the more reservations I found myself making. Briefly put, I began to suspect that Ecological Economics, as a movement, is not particularly ecological, makes little room for evolution, and rests deeply on a hard separation of humans from nature. And yet, there is too much that I find savvy in the economic arguments of Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen and Dr. Daly, and the ecological arguments of Robert Costanza and others. So I would like at least to relocate the sources of my resistance, and present three of these.

Our urban areas desperately needs investment in infrastructure. However, we have come to a place,... more Our urban areas desperately needs investment in infrastructure. However, we have come to a place, removed from nature, where we think of infrastructure rather narrowly. We plan to build with concrete and steel and asphalt, importing electricity and water, exporting waste and pollution, and relying increasingly upon the automobile to carry us about a landscape that we have segmented out into distant and disjointed uses.

Dealing with Technology As A "Wicked" Problem in the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainability, 2020

Call for papers for a special issue of the journal Sustainability. Argues for a decentralized ec... more Call for papers for a special issue of the journal Sustainability. Argues for a decentralized ecosystem approach to urban habitat conservation.

However, the real seeds of progress were sown on the sidelines. A number of events at the People&... more However, the real seeds of progress were sown on the sidelines. A number of events at the People's Summit held the promise of effective citizens' action towards sustainability and equity, building on the past and carrying on into the future. One of these was the initiation of a host of Peoples' Sustainability Treaties, dealing with a range of issues and actions, starting from the very local, going all the way up to the global. The low expectations for the outcomes from formal process suggested that an alternative centre of energy needed to be created. Uchita de Zoysa, a sustainability activist with a history of engagement pre-dating the original Earth Summit in 1992, conceived the idea to develop a set of Peoples' Sustainability Treaties, with the hope to coalesce the thinking of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the direction of a strong social movement towards an alternative and desirable future. The basic idea was to establish a network of Treaties, with each ...

Transforming Livelihoods and Lifestyles for the Well-Being of All: A Peoples' Sustainability Treaty on Consumption and Production

Sustainability Science Practice Policy, Jul 1, 2012

Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (includ... more Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (including notions of invasion, succession, etc.) to account for the growth of urban communities. In this chapter, Vasishth and Sloane reconsider human ecology, and discover merit in a scale-sensitive 'ecosystem approach' to understanding and planning the city. From a stout defense of the Chicago School's legacy, they argue that fundamental categories (such as organism, population, and community) retain their significance. In addition, the ecosystem approach retains the emphasis on place, and this brings back the environment into consideration.

Complex systems, unlike simple systems, embody multiple realities that cannot be reduced to some ... more Complex systems, unlike simple systems, embody multiple realities that cannot be reduced to some comparable set of singularities. Then, decision making protocols under complexity must be crafted to take account of such inherent incommensurability. Plan-making is usefully seen as scenario-building, with multiple stakeholders representing functionally relevant perspectives, with depictions utilizing multiple scales attentive to boundaries across levels of organization. Under complexity, planning becomes the art of constructing information-rich and meaningful depictions of the system of concern, and the development of expertise is best told as the growing of discernment based on the application of attention over time. A sound decision is one that is generated by the application of mindfulness to rich descriptions made from within an ecosystem approach to telling complexity. This paper is best seen as a scoping document, setting the context from within which a participatory, stakeholder...

From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory From Chicago to L.A.: Making sense of Urban theory, 2002

Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (includ... more Chicago School. In the following extracts, they draw strongly on lessons of plant ecology (including notions of invasion, succession, etc.) to account for the growth of urban communities. In this chapter, Vasishth and Sloane reconsider human ecology, and discover merit in a scale-sensitive 'ecosystem approach' to understanding and planning the city. From a stout defense of the Chicago School's legacy, they argue that fundamental categories (such as organism, population, and community) retain their significance. In addition, the ecosystem approach retains the emphasis on place, and this brings back the environment into consideration.

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2012

Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to se... more Cities, as the quintessential socio-technological artifacts of human civilization, are seen to set us apart from nature. But an ecosystem view from nested scale-hierarchical process-function ecology shows us that cities are best seen as the emergent and nodal end points of interactive flows of matter, energy and information. From within such a view, a clear need emerges to ecologize our cities by better integrating them back with nature. Arguing from such an ecosystem approach to depicting reality, this paper proposes that tracing the processes and functions which constitute the morphology of the city leads us to articulate an urban ecology that incorporates heat island mitigations, urban forestry, and ecological landscape management (taken both as the introduction of native vegetation and the insertion of increased proportions of pervious paving), all considered within the framework of an integrative ecosystem approach to land use planning. More importantly, such an approach to urban ecology is useful because, as a mode of intervention, it rests on—indeed, requires—an acknowledgement in ecological planning of the often amorphous and usually only indirectly sensible atmospheric, biogeochemical and hydrological processes and functions.

We care about systemic change because truly complex socio-ecological systems are often intractabl... more We care about systemic change because truly complex socio-ecological systems are often intractable to the imposition of intentional change. This intractability derives in large part from certain intrinsic properties of complex systems, namely their nested and scale hierarchic structure and the fact that they are comprised, essentially, of processes and functions rather than objects and entities (vasishth 2008). As such, they are harder to “move,” given that they are not things to be pulled or pushed,
shoved or even levered into places we thinkmore appropriate and better suited. Instead, asprocesses and functions, they need to be guided,and channelled, and deflected and cajoled.

Invited intervention on behalf of Civil Society, at the UN General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogu... more Invited intervention on behalf of Civil Society, at the UN General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature
April 22, 2014
Trusteeship Council Chamber, New York

Stakeholder Forum, Jul 9, 2013

Technology is both an obstacle in the path to a sustainable future and the bearer of the promise ... more Technology is both an obstacle in the path to a sustainable future and the bearer of the promise for a new world. For instance, the report by the UN Secretary-General's Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN, 2013), An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development, points to technology as one of the roots of current forms of unsustainable development, but at the same time holds technology up as having the strong potential to show us the way forward.

by Carol Sanford, Helene Finidori, Ashwani Vasishth, Rasigan Maharajh, Joe Brewer, Simone Cicero, Jack Harich, Michelle Holliday, Alexander Laszlo, Denis Postle, lilian ricaud, William Smith, Laurence J Victor, and christiaan weiler

Guest edited by Helene Finidori, a series of essays on the theory and practice of collective inte... more Guest edited by Helene Finidori, a series of essays on the theory and practice of collective intelligence and transformative action, from a systemic dynamic perspective.

How and where does systemic change manifest? How does it unfold? What are the leverage points, the forces and dynamics at play? What are the conditions for its empowerment and enablement? How do agency and structure come into the picture? We would like to look at the subject from various perspectives and disciplines, in research and praxis, exploring the visible and the invisible, space and time, unity and diversity, level and scale, movement and rhythm.

Available on print on demand.