19.4: Rooted Universities and the Green Infrastructure Nexus
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)Research universities have an increasingly important role to play in discovering, implementing, and sharing local and bioregional solutions to climate change. The example given above of the plug-and-play research space at the Rogers Community Garden and Urban FarmLab at UC San Diego is one way for students to embrace this challenge by assuming leadership roles at the frontiers of sustainability research and action.
The rooted university and community development
The rooted university transition creates opportunities for faculty and students to work together with community groups in tackling root causes of socio-ecological problems and climate change. Three place-based challenges are especially important for the imagination, ethics, and practice of rootedness: (1) rebuilding urban and rural communities—on a human scale—to nurture a healthy sense of place, secure attachments, and rootedness among community inhabitants; (2) coupling human and natural systems in ways that holistically and equitably instill eco-efficiency, resilience, and green cultural values into just systems of production, consumption, and daily life; and (3) making known (and valuing) how wildlands, water bodies, working landscapes, ecological services, and rural livelihoods enable cities to exist. Figure 19.4.1 illustrates the efforts of an academic center focused on enabling the bioregional and rooted university transition by linking sustainability science, planning, and design.
Place-based efforts are key to rallying the public around climate change solutions. The bioregional approach advances place-based concepts such as foodshed, watershed, and rooted community development. Rooted community development creates opportunities for coupling ecological design and democracy in how we humans build, work, and dwell together. Rooted universities have a role to play in this, on many levels. The rooted university is a university that invests a significant amount of its attention and resources in place-based education, research, and community engagement. The rooted university’s place-based approach is geared to understanding and improving how local-global forces interact and shape the coupled human-natural environments we inhabit.
A culminating idea: the green infrastructure nexus
A green infrastructure nexus can support the coupling of ecological design and democracy in efforts to advance local and bioregional solutions to climate change. This kind of nexus exists where green-cyber-civic infrastructures converge in support of sustainable development. The Urban FarmLab’s bioenergy microgrid on the UC San Diego campus is a good example. The bioenergy microgrid integrates three infrastructures: (1) green—including urban agriculture and food forestry that benefits from the output of food-waste-to-soil-and-energy systems and solar power generation; (2) civic—including institutional channels for student, faculty, staff, and community input, plus citizen science; and (3) cyber—including hardware and software for data integration and visualization, spatial analytics, monitoring, integrated modeling and assessment, scenario planning, and so on.
One of the initiatives briefly mentioned above (Measuring, Understanding and Improving Natural Climate Solutions: Enabling Carbon Neutral Development through Transborder Urban-Rural Linkages and a Green Infrastructure Nexus) got a good kick start during a series of NSF workshops. The strategic planning workshops brought together researchers from eight US and Mexican universities during June 2019 to scope out the prospect of creating a binational Border Solutions Alliance. The NSF’s Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program supported this effort with a grant (award number 1833482).
The S&CC program notes how rapidly changing intelligent technologies are transforming our world. And while this transformation may improve well-being and prosperity, it also poses significant challenges. The NSF thus seeks to support research aimed at understanding and improving how intelligent technologies can bring about economic opportunity, safety, security, health, and overall quality of life. The NSF wants this research to be place based, that is, focused on communities defined as having geographically delineated boundaries (for example, towns, cities, counties, neighborhoods, community districts, rural areas, and tribal regions). The research design must engage the community as participants, while generating new knowledge that can be used to “synergistically integrate intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, or travel within it.” The key dimensions of the NSF’s S&CC program—its place-based emphasis on territorial units, community engagement, inclusion of urban and rural, coupling of natural and built systems—all lean toward the kind of localization and bioregional approach we’ve been examining in this chapter. The fact that one of the USA’s premier science agencies is dialing into these dimensions is promising. Integrated approaches like this can help democratize science and technology and drum up enthusiasm for civically engaged scholarship urgently needed to bend the curve.