Hello all,
Urban Sustainability Project recently held our first public meeting at green spaces. Turn out was small but the discussion was lively and encouraging. If you visited the website then you are probably aware that one of the initiatives that we are trying to get off the ground is to open up a discourse in chattanooga about sustainability. This is one among many venues for that discourse to take place. Our next face to face meeting will be on April 9th at green spaces @ 5:30 pm. We will begin to present what we have begun to compile as our sustainable design criteria. We are currently looking for ways to synthesize that design criteria into a sustainability index that one could use to interpret their homes potential sustainability quotient. One of the things that we find most interesting and challenging about the project is trying to anticipate what people might potentially find challenging about living in a sustainable way and coming up with creative ways to facilitate the transition from living in a conventional home to a sustainable home. For instance, there is invariably in my conversations with home owners a point at which when we are discussing a new project they will ask, "how much maintenance will this take?" The answer I give is rarely the one they want to hear. If you rely on edible landscaping and egetable gardens to help offset your carbon foot print, that garden requires maintenance, how many of you truthfully believe that you can or will give a garden the maintenance it needs if that is part of what is required of you to live sustainably? Are there other examples of things that someone might find challenging about living sustainably? Are there solutions that you might suggest?
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Sustainable living requires a holistic view of life, a view that extends beyond our home and its lawn. There are many chores around the house that we all must do, or pay someone to do. A Sustainable approach to living in and maintaining a home doesn't make things easier or more convenient, but it does make those chores more meaningful, perhaps even enjoyable when we are armed with knowledge about how our way of doing things contributes to making life better both in the short term and for future generations. These are simple things like raking the leaves, and what we do with them after we rake them up. Do you bag them up in heavy plastic and send them to the landfill, or do you compost them in a corner of your lawn or in a nearby thicket saving landfill space, saving plastic bags, saving the fuel required to truck them away, and contributing to healthy soilbuilding? Just knowing how sustainable systems work makes participating in them more enjoyable than the normal "chores" we are familiar with. Advertisers and product developers have traditionally pushed work-saving and convenience in every aspect of homeownership. I think that idea is one that has outlived its usefulness. The repressed and beleaguered housewives of the past are not part of the equation anymore. What people lack now is not convenience but meaning. Any activity becomes more worthwhile and therefore easier to do when there is a reason for doing it.
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