Sustainable Cities
A city can be thought of as a giant business. That said - encouraging carbon reducing behaviors and practices in a city, will involve the coordination of many individuals around a common goal. This goal being to transform town practices to more ecologically friendly, energy efficient ways, and to foster a stronger sense of community. Transitions in various sectors such as structural, cultural, and societal are required to both institute change and to maintain long term transformation. Both residents and town leaders must push to facilitate this transformation.Support, engagement, and buy-in by leaders and staff are critical for moving sustainable agenda. City or municipal leadership and staff can help by:
Become aware: Learn about sustainability and become aware of how it affects your mandate as well as your constituencies and members.
Partner and Collaborate: Identify and partner with organizations with similar interests and concerns. This will help share information and resources, develop collaborative solutions, and avoid duplication of effort.
Identify solutions: Identify ways to help reduce your greenhouse gas footprint. As well, working with partners and your members, identify adaptation strategies to help cope with the change.
Take Action: Take action once appropriate changes and adaptation strategies have been identified. Identifying greenhouse gas sources, conducting an inventory, and quantifying it is the first step towards mitigation. Conducting inventories can also help identify ways to save money. This is a long-term measure where actions may not have immediate visual impact. However, ensuring that systems for adaptation are in place will allow communities to better cope with uncertainty and risk when necessary.
Disseminate Information: Share information with your members and the public. By doing this you not only demonstrate that you consider the issue to be important but also help to generate awareness specific to your area of focus. It also provides a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas.
Engage with media in order to publicize your actions and areas of concern. It allows for connecting with the broader community and public and to showcase real action and commitments. It also sets an example for others to follow.
Behavioral psychology maintains a central role in accelerating the transition to a sustainable future. Most initiatives that involve grassroots or community-based social marketing attract the public and good promoters in helping identify the barriers to sustainable strategies. Research has proven that campaigns launched this way have a much greater probability of promoting sustainable behavior.
Referenced from my original article on Carbon Neutral Kawarthas