Proposal to
Create An
ìEcoVillageî at UVM
Robert
Costanza, John
Todd, Deane Wang, Jon Erickson, Marjan van den Belt, Pat Erickson
Motivation
UVM is well on itís way to achieving itís vision of
becoming the worldís premiere environmental university. As part of
this, it
needs to take a leadership role in developing models of sustainable
communities. It must do this at several
scales, from local to global. There are
significant advantages to creating a ìmodelî small-scale sustainable
community
on or near the campus itself, to serve as a laboratory for developing
and
testing new ideas.
At
the same time, this model sustainable community can provide an
experiment in
improved student housing. Clustering students together with only other
students
clearly does not provide an optimal living/learning environment. Nor
does
segregating any of the many other rich patterns of diversity that exist
in our
world. Our vision is to create an
integrated living and learning environment where students, faculty,
other
citizens and the larger community can interact on many levels, both
with
each other and with the built,
agricultural, and natural environments.
To do this we propose creating an ìecovillageî at the University
of
Vermont.
There are
several
historical precedents for this approach.
The traditional British residential college is one, where
faculty and
students shared adjacent living quarters and common areas.
This created an extremely valuable
enrichment of the educational experience for both students and faculty. We wish to extend and update this model, by
adding residents from the community at large and by focusing the
village on the
theme of creating a model for sustainable communities of the present
and
future. The process of developing and
maintaining this community would make a unique contribution to
scholarship on
sustainability.
Basic
Characteristics:
- Living/Learning
laboratory for sustainable agriculture, urban/rural integration,
renewable
energy, ecological economics, and integrated ecological design and
governance
- A
population of approximately 80, 40 UVM students, 20 UVM faculty/staff
and
families and visiting professors, and 20 members of the broader
community.
- Broad
diversity in age, income, ethnic origin, etc.
- Housing
clustered on 4-5 acres to minimize site impact and improve social
interaction
- 20-40
acres designated by the University for organic farming and animal
husbandry
(managed in conjunction with applied and service learning classes
through
majors in e.g. Ecological Agriculture, Animal Science, and Sustainable
Forestry)
- Independent
living units with a common house, barn, greenhouse, and other shared
facilities
- Ecologically
designed to be a net energy and food producer, improve water quality,
and be a
desirable, aesthetic living experience
- Consensus-based
governance in a learning community
- Long-term
lease on university land, but non-student units owned by residents.
Plan
The
University owns land both near campus and further removed (one likely
location
might be in the experimental farms areas south of campus).
If the university were to contribute the
land, the ìdevelopersî (a small group of faculty and community leaders)
would
design, raise the funds, and build the ecovillage.
This approach would place almost no additional burden on the
current
ambitious capital campaign.
It could
either be
stipulated in the contract with the University that a certain number of
units
would be reserved for rental to students at the common rate, or the
University
could own the student rental units itself and could manage them as part
of the
overall student housing pool. The
remaining units would be owned by the faculty or other residents.
