PlacerSustain: Voices of Placer County's Sustainability Community

This is a link to an article by Susan Szpakowski that was published on the ALIA Insitute website.  The articles header is "New Approachs to revitalizing economies and communities start with bringing the parts back together."  Here is an excerpt from the article:

Get connected

Two resilience-builders I’ve learned about in the past month come from opposite sides of the globe. One is Tyze, an online platform for person-centred care networks, founded by Vickie Cammack in Vancouver, Canada (Vickie will be co-leading one of the tracks at the ALIA Summer Institute). The other is the Australian network Family by Family. In both cases, a light infrastructure facilitates people helping people, which is empowering to individuals, families, and communities. As Peter Block and John McKnight remind us in their recent blog, “All that is required is a shift in thinking from consumer to citizen. From ‘You are valuable to the economy when you shop’ to ‘You are a neighbor who has something important to contribute.’”

Networked citizens, networked leadership, networked resources, networked learning…these can all be harnessed for a more resilient society. Recently I attended a neighborhood viewing of an inspiring talk by Jeremy Rifkin, who has been closely involved with Germany’s renewable energy program. In that country, local energy production is being married to the internet, creating smart, flexible energy networks. This way, solar and wind energy, which are intermittent, can be continuously redistributed according to supply and demand. This infrastructure, combined with political will and a feed-in tariff, has taken Germany into a new era of energy independence and economic growth that is setting an example for the rest of the world. Renewable energy installations already produce more than 20 per cent of Germany’s electricity, and the green economy has created 350,000 jobs. The spirit of innovation has crossed into other sectors, creating a “sustainable revolution” that encompasses design, architecture, urban planning, and fashion.

By connecting the dots, Germany has become a source of “good ideas” and prototypes, ready to be adopted by other governments and/or demanded by their citizens. However, as Rifken points out, even when other governments pick up such winning ideas, they may be still trying to implement them using old, more centralized, linear ways of thinking. The lesson from Germany is to “think like a network,” introduce minimal enabling conditions, and then learn and innovate as you go.