This project began as a semester long service learning project in partnership with Bloomington’s Sustainability City Initiative. Our goal was to produce a strategic design plan for promoting awareness and advancing actions that ensure the city’s sustainment. We worked with the City of Bloomington department of Economic Development, the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability, and members of the community throughout this process.
Heavy involvement with our stakeholders through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and service learning activities characterized our design process.
Our design process focused on three specific areas and activities were conducted in parallel to address the complex set of problems associated with such a diverse group of stakeholders. Specifically, to understand the needs and challenges of our ‘client’, we spent some time ‘walking a mile in the shoes’ of various stakeholders, including the city’s director of economic development, and the Commission on Sustainability. This included interviews, volunteering with ongoing projects as well as observing, interacting and participating in regular meetings. To understand the complex issues and theories of urban sustainability, we performed an extensive review of relevant literature and consulted experts on the topic. Finally, to synthesize our research, observations, and insights, we continuously generated design concepts through sketching and brainstorming. We often visualized the many tactical portions of our project to conceptualize how they fit with our overarching strategic plan.
To strengthen the local community and reduce our ecological footprint, our final solution proposed new practices to be implemented in future areas, such as strategic planning, community and cultural development, economic development, urban design, as well as indicators and assessment. We determined a major area to be addressed was opening channels of communication among the various stakeholders involved. We developed an online community site for collective discourse about pertinent issues and organized the first annual Sustainable Bloomington Unconference. Another key area we focused on was Mindful Consumption—weaving awareness of energy efficient practices into the fabric of daily life. Specifically, we developed an energy dashboard concept that we are presently continuing to pursue. Our project process, overarching perspective on future sustainable city initiatives, and numerous concepts were presented to governmental, non-governmental, and community stakeholders at the conclusion of our project in April 2007, however develop and implementation of concepts from this project are ongoing.
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