Sharing

Sharing is key to sustainable living and sharing is hard!

Last night we took a step in that direction by sharing class with a UTA Masters in Sustainability course in Dallas.  We met in downtown Dallas in The Universities Center of Dallas, the first Multi-Institutional Teaching Center for higher education in Texas.  This willingness to share has created convenient education opportunities (reducing student commute time and energy), repurposed a building (formerly a department store), and set a standard for sustainability through example.  The two professors who spoke, Ed Nelson and Michael Buckley, both reiterated the importance of sustainability looking beyond energy savings to a wholistic view of the efficient use of space, resources, and responsibility.

Sharing Space  Sharing space means we have less of it exclusively for ourselves.  This may translate to smaller living space, not travelling in our own car, working in smaller offices, and having to use the pronoun "our ___" more than "my ___".  This is the idea behind mixed use developments that encourage people to live, work, and play in the same area.  It could also take the form of rotating class schedules allowing a college to have two sets of classes utilizing the same space over evenings and weekends.  It doesn't mean you don't get your own space, it just challenges us to use space in an increasingly efficient way.  The most obvious use of shared space is park space - the "shared backyard" that is currently defined as open space.

Sharing Resources  At the core of sustanability is the need to use our resources strategically. These may be tangible resources such as fuel, water, food, and energy or intangibles such as information and insight.  As we focus on sustainable development we need to consider ways to incorporate sharing our resources in a way that benefits a widening group of people.  One current resource that is being under used is that of empty buildings and vacant land.  Dr. Buckley spoke at length about the importance of revisiting these unused areas and envisioning new, sustaible uses for them.  Whether is is transforming a vacant train station into a university as UTA did with the Fort Worth Santa Fe Campus or an old grocery stonre into a church, sharing resources means we are willing to look at the possibility of building on things that already have embodied energy.

Sharing Responsibility   One of the most interesting aspects of Dr. Buckley's presentation had to do with the concept of connectivity and creating environments that connect people.  One of the biggest concerns in densely populated areas is increased crime which results form an increasing sense on anonymity.  Opening buildings to the public areas by having entries facing the street, elevated for privacy or utilizing the urban street wall to create sidewalk living space all build a sense of community that increases responsibility and accountability and as a result reduces crime.  Each of us must be willing to contribute to the idea of sustanability , even if it is an a small way such as recycling or carpooling.

Sharing  means we need to be willing to embrace change - not give up everything we have or want, just be willing to look at it a little differently in the hopes that we can share this planet a little longer.