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By Brian Skeele, on April 7th, 2011
How do I feel about the A-F grading of New Mexico Schools? Well, thank you for asking!
The challenges of our times are so extraordinary, they call for a different approach to life. Working collaboratively on real world problems, creating living sustainability, with a community wide range of stakeholders is the school of our times.
 Schools as Centers of Community Sustainability
What if each school and its surrounding neighborhoods set the intention of having the school become the center of the community? The school would then work with the surrounding neighbors in redeveloping into a socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable community!
The grading, A-F, would be a indicator of how the school/neighborhood was doing in terms of sustainability;… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on April 4th, 2011
The #1 way to Support Local Food is by… creating a deeply affordable lifestyle. Lowering the cost of living frees up customers’ pocket books so they can buy more local food and dine at restaurants serving locally produced food.
 Local Farmers, Local Food...Santa Fe Saturday AM A deeply affordable lifestyle is essential in other key ways as well. Farmers and their employees need affordable housing, water, land, processing facilities, season extending structures, fertilizers, etc. Higher costs in any one of these networks of networks undermines our food security.
Here in Santa Fe we have one of the best Farmer’s Markets in the nation, apparently. I think much of its popularity is because Santa Feans have more disposable income. And yet, in spite of all the success, Beneficial Farms CSA‘s Steve Warshawer estimates all the capacity of the Northern New Mexico regional farmers would feed only 2000 folks. Santa Fe current population is around 70,000, with a surrounding regional total of approx 100,000.
For our regional capacity, our Food Shed, to grow significantly, I believe we will have to work together to create deep affordability and free up more disposable income. I call it “Mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning and open space”. The open space is for agriculture, natural habitat, and recreation.
This strategy is good for everyone; builds our regional resiliency and food security, lowers our eco-footprint, and raises our quality of life!
Share your ideas and experiences in the comments area! Back yard chickens, collecting urine for fertilizer, compost piles, converting front yards to food forests, deep mulching strategies, farm to school programs, aquaculture, etc… the list is long….Together we can make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 29th, 2011
Serving Ourselves, While Serving Others
A few years ago, the Sustainable Neighborhoods Focus Group came up with the idea of giving as a key to a more abundant lifestyle. Currently, infill and new development often give very little to neighborhoods, usually a loss of views and open space, more traffic, and a deadness associated with second homes and single use neighborhoods.
From our Focus Group, a vision emerged where the residents of existing neighborhoods get more; More abundance and aliveness, more safety with neighbors walking on the streets to more conveniently located services. Along with a healthier, more pedestrian friendly lifestyle comes innovative ways to share more amenities, creating a greater sense of community and providing a more affordable lifestyle, a lifestyle beyond suburbia, a lifestyle that lives lighter on the planet.
 A Neighborhood that Serves Itself, while Serving Others! The Focus Group identified conceptual “clusters” of homes or workspaces, designed around residents’ simple but fundamental essential common needs; (in other words, the “cluster” could be a scattered site)
- Child-Oriented Houses
- a Cohousing Group
- an Elder Housing Group
- a Live/work and Commercial Space Cluster
- a Small Houses and Eco-Homes Compound
- Artist Cooperative Workshops
- Young People Living Over Garages….
Giving More Amenities, Getting More Life
These different clusters were assigned services to be provided, not only to meet the cluster’s own needs, but as economies of sale require, to meet the needs of the adjoining clusters and the existing, surrounding neighborhoods…. READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 20th, 2011
Oh my God! We can share stuff, even cars!
 Sustainable living with a carshare! Can you imagine, you can rent out your car by the hour??!! yep, human ingenuity strikes again. You probably have heard of Zipcars, and other private car share programs. Well, another variation on the concept, peer to peer car sharing, is coming on line. RelayRides in Boston claims their participating car owners can earn up to $8000 a year by renting out their cars. With different Smartphone interfaces, integrated web cam configurations, and insurance packages tailored to the club program, a variety of business models have sprung up around the planet. … READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 16th, 2011
Sustainable Urban Village is an odd phrase.
Sustainable Urban Village is a mash up of opposites. “Village” is pastoral, dreamy, idealistic, old fashioned, small and intimate. “Urban” conjures up pretty much the opposite-gritty, concrete and asphalt, contemporary, hip, huge and cold. Add “sustainable” to the mix, and it becomes ….an odd phrase. Where would one find such a creature? And what qualities will it embody?
As we contemplate where we’re going as a people and we feel the ground shifting under us as we transform from a car dominated sprawl lifestyle to a pedestrian friendly, ecologically sound, lowered consumptive way of life, I’m suggesting we pick and choose from the best options; incorporating best practices, and lessons learned of what works and what doesn’t, leaving those choices with harsh unintended consequences behind.
 Live, work, play, learn, shop, all within walking. Kids play, while you catchup with a friend! “What works” for me, rolls into 5 principles; “Mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning and open space……everywhere.” Another way to put it? Sustainable Urban Villages, and they are found…..everywhere.
It takes a certain number of residential to make commercial be successful. These economies of scales hold true no mater where we live, in a rural setting, a grayfield, or in the suburbs. We will learn what works, what it takes to be sustainable. As we reinvent our economy, we will pick wisely, and base our investment in the future on the real, lasting values we hold collectively. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to live in balance with our earth.
Redeveloping ourselves sustainable is complicated and requires collaboration. We’re wired to innovate. As we rise to the greatest challenge humanity has ever known, we will be amazing. Share your vision!
Together, we can bring forward the emerging sustainable economy, a lifestyle that is “Good for people, good for the planet, and good for the polar bears”.
Let’s make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 8th, 2011
1/3 of the Boomers want to move in. 88% of the Millennials want to move in. The problem is, Sustainable Urban Villages don’t exist!
 Building Your Neighborhood Sustainable Well they do, between my ears and in my heart, but we need a great modeling tool so all the future residents, landowners, finance people, city planners, designers, the school district, and neighbors can see what there are signing up for/signing off on. Then the resuscitation of the construction industry can begin in earnest, the emerging sustainable economy can…emerge!
As this is the ultimate sales tool, we are building the neighborhood on paper, so the future residents can say, “Yes, if you build that, I’ll move in!”. And of course, the numbers have to work for everyone involved. Let me give you a walk thru of “the Killer Modeling Tool” as I conceive it…. READ MORE >>
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