Category: Sustainability

Accelerate 77 Share Fair Celebrates Sustainability in Chicago

Looking for a cool sustainability-themed event this coming weekend? Here you go: this Saturday from 10am to 4pm at Truman College on Chicago’s North Side, the Institute for Cultural Affairs will host the “Accelerate 77” Share Fair that brings together people and organizations working on all kinds of sustainability initiatives in each of Chicago’s 77 community areas.

Back in the spring of 2012, my SUST 210 Honors seminar at Roosevelt’s Chicago Campus did on-the-ground research in small groups in 5 different communities in Chicago: Fuller Park, Rogers Park, Little Village, and the North and South halves of the Loop. Their research added to that of students at several other Chicago colleges and universities, as students fanned out across the city to learn about urban sustainability initiatives and meet people from every walk of life, in every neighborhood of the city.

As the ICA Share Fair’s website describes, there’s a ton going on this Saturday:

Exhibitors: Come Meet Your Neighborhood Assets

The main room will be filled with representatives of all 77 communities of Chicago. These representatives have been identified as leaders in their respective communities, but a leader can be embodied in many ways. We work towards realising a sustainable Chicago, the foundations of which rely on economic, cultural, and social sustainability. You can expect to see examples of urban agriculture, green technology, and alternative energy, but then also so much more! Each leading program has their own methodology in how to encorporate/encourage environmentalism in their neighborhoods. True to the richness of the Chicago community, we expect a lot of different ideas to come out in our exchange of best practices. To see a full listing of the organizations that have signed up already check out the See Who’s Coming page. 

Connection Seminars: Q&A with Citywide Stakeholders 

In “breakout rooms” located outside of the main fair space, there will be representatives of programs which work all across Chicago. If you’re part of an organization, these will be great opportunities to learn more about exciting programs across the city and gain some “how to” at the same time.  To see a full listing of the organizations and topics covered, head over to the Connection Seminars listing page.

The Reception: Celebrate and Learn

After the Share Fair, a reception will be held at the ICA, located at 4750 N Sheridan Ave. Come and learn about Chicago’s very own GreenRise and help us celebrate the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ 50th anniversary. To learn more about the GreenRise tours, head over to the GreenRise Tours page.

During the spring semester of 2012, the 20 students in Prof. Mike Bryson’s SUST 210 Sustainable Future honors class conducted a semester-long community-based research project in conjunction with the ICA’s effort during 2011 and 2012 to map and describe as many sustainability initiatives and assets as possible in each one of Chicago’s 77 official Community Areas. Two RU students, international studies major Dylan Amlin and sustainability studies major Ngozi Okoro,  pursued summer internships with the ICA by conducting community research in several South Side neighborhoods.  As Dylan notes about the Share Fair:

It will be an excellent networking opportunity for students as well, and we could really use some youthful energy in the room. If students are interested in volunteering, they can contact me directly asap (dylanamlin@gmail.com). They also can go to the Accelerate 77 website to learn more about the project and to register.

Join Dylan, Ngozi, and lots of other students, faculty, sustainability professionals, grassroots activists, and area officials for this singular event!

Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age after the End of Nature (a call for papers)

I recently received this intriguing call for papers through email. If you’re a young and aspiring writer and have an interest in the natural environment, sustainability issues, and related subjects, check this out!

In the prescient 1988 book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben forecast the end of a primordial relationship between humans and the untrammeled earth. Evidence abounds that our ancient connections with the home planet have irrevocably altered.  What happens to individuals and societies when their most fundamental cultural, historical, and ecological bonds attenuate—or snap?  How do the young, especially, cope in a baffling and mutable new world? “When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit,” wrote Henry Beston, “man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw. . .  .”  It is vital that we hear from members of the generation who have grown up on the new earth, who can express their challenges, fears, dreams, and sources of resilience for living and thriving as cosmic outlaws.

Co-editors Julie Dunlap and Susan A. Cohen are soliciting submissions for an anthology tentatively titled, “Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age after the End of Nature.”  Submissions are invited from young writers, born in 1982 or later. We are interested in essays, short fiction, and poetry that explore themes including (but not limited to) growing up in a warming climate, accepting biodiversity decline, defining responsible consumption, understanding the relevance of wilderness, interpreting moralities of resource allocation, new views of urban design, sustainability, and environmental justice, technological optimism or pessimism, environmental heroes for the future, and sources of joy in a diminished place.

Julie Dunlap is co-editor of Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together (MIT Press, 2012) and an award-winning author of children’s books, articles, and essays about nature, science, and environmental history. Susan A. Cohen (formerly Susan A. C. Rosen) is co-editor of Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-Based Writing (University of Utah Press, 2010), editor of Shorewords: A Collection of American Women’s Coastal Writings (University of Virginia Press, 2003), professor of English at Anne Arundel Community College, and the author of numerous essays on American literature and the environment.

Please submit materials electronically (.doc or .rtf files only for essays and fiction – .pdf files will be accepted for poetry) by December 31, 2012, along with contact information and a one-paragraph author bio.  We will accept essays & fiction up to 4,000 words (one per contributor) and up to three poems per person.  Please submit copies of your work to both of the e-mail addresses below.  If you must submit by mail, please send TWO double-spaced copies to both addresses below.  We will be reading and selecting pieces in early 2013.  We are happy to accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you please notify us if your submission is accepted elsewhere.

Send your work to:

  • Julie Dunlap:  juliejdunlap@earthlink.net (6371 Tinted Hill, Columbia, MD 21045)
  • Susan A. Cohen:  sacohen3@aacc.edu (40 Johnson Road, Pasadena, MD 21122)

Thank you.  We look forward to reading your essays, stories, and poems!

The Ethics of Place in Urban Areas

This weekend I’m at Santa Clara University in California’s Silicon Valley at one of my favorite professional conferences: the annual gathering of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences. Like the literature and environmental folks I hang out with at ASLE‘s biannual conferences, these folks in AESS are my professional tribe: educators, students, writers, scientists, and activists working on every conceivable kind of issue or project related to environmental education and sustainability. (In fact, I’m struck by how pervasive a theme sustainability has become at the AESS conferences, despite the fact that it is not explicitly a part of the organization’s name or identity).

Santa Clara University

This morning I’m part of a presentation panel entitled “Ethics of Place in Urban Areas,” which was organized by my colleague and friend Gavin Van Horn of the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago. Here he describes the context, themes, and over-arching issues our panel addresses:

Place has become a topic of increasing scholarly attention and research. Place is particularly relevant to environmental studies and environmental sciences, because place provides a spatial anchor of memory and meaning in which care for the natural world is fostered. Most work in moral philosophy and Western ethics is abstract in the sense that it seeks to discover standards of right and wrong that are universally valid and applicable. Paradoxically, moral psychology tells us that ethical thinking and our sense of value are rooted in the lived experience in a specific place, with specific natural and social characteristics, landscapes, and cultures. The session panelists submit that an ethics of place which roots our ethical obligations more concretely and locally is essential for a more robust environmental future. We examine the ways in which ethics might be re-envisioned to include a respect for complexity and multiplicity of place in an urban context.

Our presentations integrate urban agriculture and alternative economies, landscape aesthetics, urban water quality, environmental education, and the ethics of care to discuss the ways in which place can inform an ecological ethic that is democratic and participatory in its orientation. Our approach is rooted in the disciplines of geography, political science and bioethics, religious studies and ethics, urban ecology, and sustainability studies. While addressing conceptual and ideological questions about the ethics of place, we profile on-the-ground case studies and relevant research from each panelist’s community-based work. Our goal is to engage audience members in a dialogue about how scholars and citizens can better understand how to cultivate respect for and engagement with nature in metropolitan areas – spaces frequently misunderstood as un-conducive to an ethics of place.


Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee (2010)

My presentation, “Exploring the Chicago River: Ethics, Sustainability, and a Sense of Place” (view pdf of slideshow) looks at this waterway/ecosystem as one key manifestation of urban nature in Chicago. I explore how scientific and artistic engagement with the river can contribute to one’s sense of not just the river’s history, ecology, and identity, but also that of Chicago in particular and watersheds more generally. As my abstract notes,

The degraded yet undeniably charismatic urban waterway, the Chicago River, is a mighty fine place to contemplate the tangled relationships among water quality, land use, and sustainability within cities and suburbs. As a site for exploring urban nature, an object of analysis in the scientific assessment of water quality and urban ecology, and a case-study in landscape aesthetics, the Chicago river provides students and citizens myriad opportunities to develop a sense of place. More generally, experiencing urban rivers — and understanding their function within the complex watersheds of metropolitan regions — can foster not just ecological literacy about urban ecosystems but also ethical engagement with one’s community.

You can also view a Powerpoint slideshow of my presentation (here with annotations) that features several photographs of the river by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee, who collaborated with me on a Mindful Metropolis cover story about the Chicago River back in 2010. Read more about rivers here on this blog, as well.

Celebrating Sustainability at GR2012 in Joliet

This past Saturday, I attended GR2012, the 3rd annual Celebrating Sustainability festival in my hometown of Joliet, IL. The past couple of years I had attended with my family purely in the role of visitors to the festival’s original location at the Joliet Public Library / Rock Run Forest Preserve. We checked out the many green products and services among the many exhibits, played games, petted a menagerie of animals, and listened to live music.

RU students (Stephanie and Sean) hobnob with JJC students and alumni (Tiffany, Tori, and Antonio)

But the festival outgrew its site in only two years, so this year’s organizers moved it to more spacious grounds: the West Side campus of Joliet Junior College, which has a beautiful new student center as well as a picnic area near the site of a significant prairie restoration underway at the nation’s oldest community college. And this time, I came as a participant: along with SUST majors Sean Hattan and Stephanie Eisner, I ran an informational table among the dozens of exhibitors at GR2012 to meet and greet visitors and prospective students. And I gave a slideshow presentation entitled Sustainability in the Suburbs – GR2012 19 May 2012 (pdf) during the day’s program of public lectures.

For more on the day’s proceedings, check out this post on the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future blog.

Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy at UIC

The Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy (SISE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago is an intense interdisciplinary program for graduate and senior-level undergraduate students.  From August 9-17, participants from diverse academic backgrounds will be immersed in a broad spectrum of sustainability and energy related topics: policy, economics, health, science, engineering, environment, urban planning, business, and entrepreneurship.

Senior SUST major Jeff Wasil, who works as an environmental engineer and who will graduate from RU this spring, was accepted to last summer’s Sustainability Institute at UIC. Jeff was part of an interdisciplinary research team of undergrad and grad students who designed and proposed an “intelligent sewer system” meant to reduce Chicago’s stormwater runoff. The team’s final presentation can be viewed here:

Wasil et al. UIC Inst Presentation Sum2011 (pdf) (4MB file — right-click to save to your computer first)

The theme of the SISE 2012 program will be “Election 2012: Energy, Economics and Environment.” Using the presidential election as the point of departure for a critical analysis of national energy and sustainability issues, students will be enveloped in discussions about national challenges such as energy security, economic recovery and growth, US competitiveness, and climate change. Students will divide into teams to propose innovative solutions that rely on combinations of technology, policy and entrepreneurship.  The positions of the two political parties are likely to be quite distinct and the public debate lively, providing ample inspiration and engagement for the SISE2012 program.  Following its treatment of US energy needs and perspectives, SISE will turn to world energy, addressing the energy relationships between the US and other regions and nations.

Admission to the Summer Institute is highly competitive with only eighty open seats.  Students from across Chicago and the country are invited to apply. Prospective students are asked to submit an application and resume for consideration.

UIC is accepting applications from now until the beginning of June. Find out more information here, or contact Thomas Lipsmeyer at (talaan@uic.edu) for questions concerning the program.

Food Deserts: Myth or Reality?

I was greatly surprised to read this article by Gina Kolata on today’s (18 April 2012) front page of the New York Times about the supposed lack of documented links between urban food deserts and incidence of obesity. A couple of studies are cited here that suggest not only is the notion of a urban food desert potentially fictitious, but that it has yet to be linked with the level of obesity in a given population. The implicit argument of the article is that the concerns that have arisen about urban food deserts, in particular, may be overblown.

I find it hard to agree. Curiously absent from the article’s discussion is the several years’ worth of empirical research on Chicago’s food deserts by the Mari Gallagher Group, which uses a block-by-block analysis of the city’s population and a systematic on-the-ground assessment of the location of every food outlet in Chicago (from supermarkets to smaller groceries to convenience stories to liquor stores that sell “food” products). This research, updated annually since 2006, has clearly documented both the continued presence of large food deserts on the West and South Sides and the close correspondence of these areas to a variety of health risk factors, including higher body-mass indexes.

The good news is that the number of Chicagoans living within food deserts — places in which fresh food sources are not readily available to community residents — has decreased dramatically in recent years from about 633,000 in 2006 to 384,000 in 2011. But there’s still a ways to go to address this critical food justice, socioeconomic, and health issue. See the reports below for more details from Gallagher’s research.

Gallagher – Chicago Food Desert Drilldown 2011 (pdf)

Gallagher – Examining the Impact of Food Deserts – Exec Sum 2006 (pdf)

Sustainability Internship Deadline Extended to 4/16

This semester my SUST 210 honors class is working on a community-based research project in collaboration with the Chicago non-profit organization, The Institute for Cultural Affairs, based in Uptown. Along with students from several other Chicago colleges and universities, we are researching and mapping sustainability initiatives throughout each of the city’s 77 community areas. The work continues this summer, so the ICA is seeking motivated and interested students for 40 unpaid internships on this tremendous and valuable city-wide project. Here are the details! — Mike Bryson

Application deadline now extended to Monday, April 16, 2012

The ICA Summer Internship Program, “Accelerate 77” is an opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in preparations for the September 15, 2012 Share Fair event that will highlight, connect and accelerate local sustainability initiatives at the community level throughout Chicago neighborhoods. During the 2011-2012 academic school year, 180 students from six Chicago-based universities have participated in the first phase of the Accelerate 77 project by doing fieldwork in 54 of the 77 Chicago community areas. This summer, students will have the opportunity to take the Accelerate 77 project to the next level developing their skill-set through hands-on community based projects and acquiring skill in facilitation and enabling participatory group processes.

This spring ICA will be interviewing for 40 intern positions – flexing the program timetable between June and August.  The positions range from:

*  community documentation and engagement of sustainable initiatives,
*  designing and planning the September 15th event celebrating the 231 initiatives (three initiatives from each of the 77 communities),
*  marketing and public relations for the Accelerate 77 project and share fair event, and
*  website support for the community documentation, interchange and post-event collaboration.

Out of the 40 intern positions, the program will offer eight students an intensive leadership development course that will provide hands-on experience of co-leading teams in collaboration with eight ICA resource guides.

More information on leadership development opportunities and the Accelerate 77 project can be found at this page on the ICA website.

New application deadline: Monday, April 16th, 2012

For more information, check out these documents:

Nina Winn
ICA Program Coordinator
nwinn@ica-usa.org
Office:  773.769.6363, ext 301

Karen Snyder
ICA Volunteer and RU alum
snyder@consultmillennia.com
Home office: 773.506.2551
Cell: 773.758.2551

Growing Power’s Urban Farm in Milwaukee

For its first field trip experience this spring, my SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class on urban agriculture, social justice, and community development ventured up Lake Michigan’s western shoreline to the great city of Milwaukee. Our destination was the flagship urban farm operation of Growing Power, the non-profit urban ag enterprise established in 1995 by pro basketball player-turned-urban farmer Will Allen.

Growing Power's flagship farm location in Milwaukee

Since the mid-2000s, Growing Power has expanded its operations to several sites in Chicago, including the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (CLUF) in Cabrini-Green, which is the service learning partner organization / work site for our SUST 350 class this semester.

Our objective in visiting Growing Power’s Milwaukee location was to get a hands-on introduction to one of the most celebrated sustainable urban farm operations in the US. We began our day with a picnic lunch at our urban farm site in Chicago, where we broke bread with CLUF/Growing Power staff and Youth Corps high school student interns. Then, we piled into a rented school bus and headed up to Growing Power’s site on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, where we got a superb and information-packed 90-minute tour of the entire two-acre facility by Amy, a tour facilitator and full-time employee of the farm.

Growing Power is an example of a hybrid urban farm that is focused on developing sustainable urban farming practices in the production of vegetables (especially baby greens salad mixes), fish (primarily tilapia), animal products (goat milk and meat, eggs and poultry), and compost.

Growing trays in greenhouse #1

Their food is sold to area restaurants, at the Growing Power on-site farm stand, and at various “Market Basket” locations in Milwaukee where fresh food is hard to find. All of their growing soil is produced on-site by a sophisticated and large-scale composting system, which includes an impressive vermiculture operation that uses worms to process plant “waste” into nutrient-rich soil. Growing Power is a pioneer is using closed-loop cultivation systems in which wastewater from the aquaponic fish-growing tank flows through hydroponic plant beds, where various vegetables and flowers take up the excess nutrients from the water; the cleansed water is then returned to the aquaponics tanks, to start the cycle again.

Here, perfect soil is created by worms. Dirt is the great equalizer, the foundation of agriculture -- no matter one's race, color, or creed.
Aquaponic tank, replenished by water filtered by the hydroponically-grown plants in the upper level

The farm also harvests renewable energy from several solar panel arrays, and uses the heat bio-generated from interior composting bins to warm its several large greenhouses and significantly reduce heating costs during the cold Wisconsin winters.

For a more detailed account of our group’s tour, check out the field trip notes taken by Maria Cancilla of our SUST 350 class at the pdf link below and the photos I took of our tour. Also see Growing Power’s website for a wealth of information about the farm as well as virtual tours of its facility.

Growing Power Tour Notes 2012-03-24 (pdf)

Growing Power’s Milwaukee and Chicago facilities are prime examples, but by no means the only ones, of the burgeoning urban farming movement in cities and suburbs across North America. Students in this inaugural section of SUST 350 in Roosevelt’s Sustainability Studies program are working on a community-based research project about the Cabrini-Green neighborhood’s history, present assets, and future prospects. Two-thirds of our class meetings take place at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm in Cabrini-Green, a half-acre urban farm that began as a small community garden built atop a derelict basketball court in 2002. Here we are working side-by-side with Youth Corps teenage interns from the neighborhood to work compost, weed planting beds, harvest seeds from last year’s crops, build a new hoop house, and do whatever else needs to be done in the farm’s early spring work season.

This farm is an inspiring example of how sustainable agriculture in inner-city neighborhoods can contribute to positively to the physical environment, economic activity, educational opportunities, and social fabric of its community. Its example can be a spark for imagining other urban farming projects that could be implemented in underserved communities throughout the greater Chicago region — such as my hometown of Joliet, IL, located 40 miles southwest of Chicago’s Loop.

Vermiculture compost bins inside a greenhouse at Growing Power
The production of compost at Growing Power's 2-acre site is incredible; we called this pile "Mount Compost"
Our group from Roosevelt University and the Chicago Lights Urban Farm

Urban Agriculture in Joliet

The phrase “urban agriculture” might seem like an oxymoron. But this burgeoning social and economic movement is revolutionizing food production, land use, K-12 education, and community development in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland. But smaller cities like my hometown of Joliet have an opportunity to vault to the vanguard of urban agricultural innovation, if they just seize the day.

This spring some of my Roosevelt University students and I work Wednesday afternoons at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm, a small but incredibly productive operation in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on Chicago’s Near-North Side.

Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)

This half-acre oasis of green built atop an abandoned basketball court started as a community garden back in 2002. Now, the Chicago Lights staff, volunteers, and local youth interns produce over 100 kinds of vegetables each growing season from this hitherto derelict property.

The Cabrini-Green farm is thus a vital source of freshly grown, organic produce in a place where walking to the nearest supermarket can entail crossing a dangerous gang boundary. It’s also a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural techniques; a place of peace in an area pockmarked by poverty and violence; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world.

The community garden created by Cool Joliet and the University of Saint Francis (M. Bryson)

Here in Joliet, various groups have jump-started impressive urban agriculture initiatives lately, including the Cool Joliet / USF community garden project on the near West Side, the Joliet Park District’s new organic community garden opening up on McDonough Street on the far West Side; and Pilcher Park’s community/school garden on the East Side.

One remarkable opportunity waiting to bloom sits smack dab in the city’s center: the huge vacant lot located just west of Joliet Township High School’s Central campus and east of Silver Cross Field. Formerly the site of Rendel’s auto-body repair shop, this expansive grassy parcel is now owned by the high school district and has a yet-to-be-determined destiny.

View of the vacant lot owned by JT Central, looking east from the western boundary of the lot toward the high school (M. Bryson)

The school district should think big about what this property could be. One ambitious but exciting option is to create an education-focused urban agriculture enterprise for JT Central students that could start small, but eventually scale up and diversify to achieve educational and social impacts that would be unprecedented within the greater Chicago region.

Imagine students, teachers, and staff just walking outside to the farm next door and doing meaningful physical work growing and harvesting organically produced food. Such projects could be fully integrated with the school’s science, social studies, phys ed, business and health curricula, so that students learn from the ground up the ecological, economic, and social benefits of urban agriculture. Imagine their fresh local produce being donated to local food pantries, sold by student entrepreneurs at the Joliet farmers market, and eaten by students in Central’s cafeteria.

I know — it sounds pretty far-fetched. But then again, is it any crazier than believing you can grow food on top of an old basketball court in Cabrini-Green?

This essay was published as “The Revolution of Urban Agriculture” in the 29 March 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. See more pictures of Joliet Central’s open space and the Cool Joliet / USF community garden. Read about the High School for Public Service Youth Farm in Brooklyn, NY, which began in 2010 as a partnership with the nonprofit urban ag organization, bk farmyards.

Summer Internships: Sustainability in Chicago’s Communities

This semester my SUST 210 honors class is working on a community-based research project in collaboration with the Chicago non-profit organization, The Institute for Cultural Affairs, based in Uptown. Along with students from several other Chicago colleges and universities, we are researching and mapping sustainability initiatives throughout each of the city’s 77 community areas. The work continues this summer, so the ICA is seeking motivated and interested students for 40 unpaid internships on this tremendous and valuable city-wide project. Here are the details! — Mike Bryson

Application deadline now extended to Monday, April 16, 2012

The ICA Summer Internship Program, “Accelerate 77” is an opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in preparations for the September 15, 2012 Share Fair event that will highlight, connect and accelerate local sustainability initiatives at the community level throughout Chicago neighborhoods. During the 2011-2012 academic school year, 180 students from six Chicago-based universities have participated in the first phase of the Accelerate 77 project by doing fieldwork in 54 of the 77 Chicago community areas. This summer, students will have the opportunity to take the Accelerate 77 project to the next level developing their skill-set through hands-on community based projects and acquiring skill in facilitation and enabling participatory group processes.

This spring ICA will be interviewing for 40 intern positions – flexing the program timetable between June and August.  The positions range from:

*  community documentation and engagement of sustainable initiatives,
*  designing and planning the September 15th event celebrating the 231 initiatives (three initiatives from each of the 77 communities),
*  marketing and public relations for the Accelerate 77 project and share fair event, and
*  website support for the community documentation, interchange and post-event collaboration.

Out of the 40 intern positions, the program will offer eight students an intensive leadership development course that will provide hands-on experience of co-leading teams in collaboration with eight ICA resource guides.

More information on leadership development opportunities and the Accelerate 77 project can be found at this page on the ICA website.

Application deadline: Monday, April 9, 2012

For more information, check out these documents:

Nina Winn
ICA Program Coordinator
nwinn@ica-usa.org
Office:  773.769.6363, ext 301

Karen Snyder
ICA Volunteer and RU alum
snyder@consultmillennia.com
Home office: 773.506.2551
Cell: 773.758.2551