Crisis or Opportunity?
The mature human brain weighs, on average, a mere
1.4 kilos (three pounds), yet it contains a phenomenal
100 billion nerve cells (neurons) plus 10 to 50 times that
number of cells in a supportive network of nourishing
tissue and fibers (National Research Council 1989).
Your nerves transmit messages to and from
your brain at speeds about 200 miles per hour!
Your body grows another 40 yards of hair every 24
hours. Your body is about 70% water? And you’ll urinate
about 12,000 gallons of urine in your
Lifetime.
From Ivory Towers
to
Ivory Gardens
The Library of Congress is the
largest library in the world, with
nearly 128 million items on
approximately 530 miles of
bookshelves. The collections include
more than 29 million books and
other printed materials, 2.7 million
recordings, 12 million photographs,
4.8 million maps, 5 million music
items and 57 million manuscripts.
The Library receives some 22,000
items each working day and adds
approximately 10,000 items to the
collections daily.
http://www.loc.gov/homepage/fascinate.html
The UCSD Library has over 3
million volumes on its shelves.
What does the academic
knowledge tell us? How is it
produced, organized, shared,
integrated and made useful?
Schools & Divisions at UCSD
•Arts and Humanities Division
•Biological Sciences Division
•Engineering, Jacobs School
•International Relations & Pacific Studies
•Jacobs School of Engineering
•Physical Sciences
•School of Management
•School of Medicine
•School of Pharmacy
•Scripps Institution of Oceanography
•Social Sciences
•UCSD Extension
centuries
millennia
Conceptual Map of the Sustainable Development
Literature
Four Integrated Challenges of
Regional Ecology
1.
Wise stewardship of
ecosystems and natural
capital (environment)
2.
Adaptable political
organization and
government that fosters
social learning and
innovation (legalinstitutional terrain).
3.
Social justice and equity
(socio-cultural milieu)
4.
Efficiency in systems of
production, distribution and
exchange (economy and
technology)
Time
present
decades
Regional
Ecology
Space
local
regional
global
Identifies
four interlocked,
components of
sustainability
science
Highlights the
REGION as the
most amenable
geographic scale
for integrating
theory and
practice
Source: National Research Council (1999) Our Common Journey:
A Transition Toward Sustainability.
Sustainability Science –science
committed to bridging barriers that
separate traditional modes of inquiry.
The National Academies
National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine
National Research Council
“The major threats and opportunities of the
sustainability transition are not only
multiple, cumulative, and interactive, but
also place-based. In other words, it is in
specific regions with distinctive social, and
ecological attributes that the critical threats
to sustainability emerge, and where a
successful transition will need to be
based.”
(National Research Council 1999: 285)
The triangle of conflicting goals for planning and
the three associated conflicts
Social Justice,
Economic
Opportunity,
Income Equality
Property
Conflict
Overall
Economic
Growth and
Efficiency
Green,
Profitable,
Fair
Development
Conflict
Sustainable
Development
Environmental
Protection
Resource
Conflict
This diagram is adapted from Campbell (1999, figure 12.1). Campbell notes:
“Planners define themselves, implicitly, by where they stand on the triangle. The illusive
ideal of sustainable devleopment leads one to the center” (p. 253)
San Diego-Tijuana City Region
Community
Development
Industrial
Ecology
Watershed
Management
Regional
Planning &
Decisionsupport
Global
Local
Three E’s &
governance
Equity
Economic
efficiency
Environmental
stewardship
Governance
Integrative
discourses
Info and comm
technology
Urban & Regional
Planning
(New Regionalism/
Institutionalism)
Sustainability
Science
Humanities
(Ethics, Aesthetics,
History, Wisdom
Traditions
Conceptual Matrix to Enable Integrative Views and Knowledge Sharing
D.Scott Slocombe (2001) Integration of Physical, Biological, and Socioeconomic Information. In A
Guidebook to Integrated Ecological Assesments, edited by Jensen and Bourgeron
Schools & Divisions at UCSD
•Arts and Humanities Division
•Biological Sciences Division
•Engineering, Jacobs School
•International Relations & Pacific Studies
•Jacobs School of Engineering
•Physical Sciences
•School of Management
•School of Medicine
•School of Pharmacy
•Scripps Institution of Oceanography
•Social Sciences
•UCSD Extension
Source of Transdisciplinary diagram
Tress, Bärbel, Gunther Tress, Gary Fry and Paul Opdam. 2006. From landscape
research to landscape planning : aspects of integration, education and
application. Dordrecht: Springer. Chap. 2, p. 16.
From Ivory Towers
to Ivory Gardens