It's not enough to do it yourself. The suburban monolith must change its values, be re educated, be wooed. The focus should be to promote green values in the media and education in conjunction with offering the attraction of vernacular design incorporating all green values. You want, ultimately, communities of diversity united by the common values of private ownership, public common lands, sustainability, and 3E (ergonomic/ecologic/economic) living.
The work has now been done to envision, plan, and in increasing cases, realize green communities. However, these often still smack of the segregated commune idea. Suburbanites of every color, size, and density must be reached through government incentives well-presented. Otherwise, it ain't gonna happen.
Simple cost facts and figures on an individual level comparing green and non-green
living coupled with a visual display of the best that current green-built has to offer,
in various styles including the vernacular, is a necessary educational strategy needing to be carried out early and everywhere - with most funding for the high-schoolers, the immediate home-builders of tomorrow.
But we should not overlook the aging generation looking for a smaller empty-nester. This is a vastly under-rated market for green because these folk were not raised green or educated green and might not even know what green is. They might think it's political. We need articles in retirement magazines and seminars in churches, supermarket handouts for community presentations, ads in local publications.
All this takes time and energy. Be in contact with local greens, if any. Have green people donate facilities and minimal budget for a pool party for a day and invite all the teen-agers who voluntarily handed out your leaflets at supermarkets and took your meeting announcements to churches and schools. To get the teens to do this, go to churches and schools, and post (with permission) "Wanted: Green Human" posters. Build a list of volunteers ready to be called on. When the time comes, send them forth with the promise of a pool or beach party, or reasonable equivalent, dangling before their eyes.
Attend civic functions and collar the leaders to host presentations in their homes; make it fun and relaxing. Bring food. Have a picnic/ BBQ/ street party (no loud music unless the neighbors OK it). Tell the hosts they have a responsibility to set an example of community and informed decision-making. Make sure they understand you are not selling anything. Offer to help. Most importantly, be prepared with your presentation or get someone who does it well. A good presentation on CD is better than a poor one in person.
Can anyone get Andres Duany to make such a CD? He's smart enough to know how to talk to a green-illiterate audience, and he's definitely green. Watch him give a fabulous talk along with Susan (NotSoBig) Suzanka. I stayed up until 6 in the morning watching this 3 hour online video. It is that good. This particular talk does have some technical terminology, so be warned. (Link info for this video is given under the Links tab (bottom of page).
Answer questions at presentations. If you don't know the answer, say you don't know, but you will try to find the answer. Questions indicate interest. Get the person's contact info and tell them you will call them when you find the answer. Then do it. Spend time to encourage them, offer source links, whatever. Don't wait for a donor to fund a glossy publication or idea-book. Make your own. Search the web for good, clear presentation material. Create a document and insert economically appropriate web photos illustrating various solutions overcoming all the problems that green addresses. Or, another approach is to download your favorite photos (if you like them, others might too) and build a presentation around them. Include a link to your favorite, educational fun green websites. Print this material out and put it in a large album with sleeved pages. Use it after your presentation to let people look through. Include photos of vaguely local-vernacular-looking homes so they are not frightened. [WARNING! Advertisement follows!] I would show them some of my notsobig, economical, Bright Idea Homes with green thermal systems and, specifically my innovative and integrating system called the Greenhouse Cap. (see doc : The Greenhouse Cap).
The Greenhouse Cap homes have the best of both worlds, flat roof space and pitched roofs over the exact same area. Suburbanites love pitched roofs and techies love places to put their solar panels.
Who is not being reached with the green message? Find them and tailor an educational strategy to reach them. Use visuals whenever possible. Convert the pre-fab and panelized builders through subsidized design training seminars for their stable of designers. Evaluate their green strength and enhance it, encouraging what green they lack. Explain to all builders the desirability of hiring green sub-contractors. Hold seminars for sub-contractors, who should know green anyway, but offer a seminar or home group to initiate the uninformed. They don't really want to be left behind. Make it painless.
Canvass localities to access the green knowledge of sub-contractors and any green
strengths they may have and put the green-leaners in a local directory. Make it available to all local builders. Include in it a clear and simple and brief introduction explaining the emerging importance of green building to the consumer and the resale market. Let them see that green-educated generations are coming up who will prefer not to build or buy non-green.
With our bad building habits, we are turning our planet into a junk yard adversely affecting our health. The next step is to promote top/mid/bottom understanding that green comes only through sustainability and values-guided concept design. Use websites, blogs, off or online mags. Take it to the streets. Initiate community discussions.
Look for inner-city projects that have potential for cost-effective greening. Talk to the people who pay the thermal bills, preferably the residents, if they have an organization. If not, one can be started. Start small and build on your success.
Create a baby-step list of quickly effective green strategies that are cheap and easy to implement. One of the most instantly financialy rewarding is to get removable, storable, light-weight, manually operated see-through solar shades over east and west balcony windows. Bamboo or plastic roll blinds do a credible job for a few years. At this stage we are looking for instant gratification, not long-term investment. Do a simple before and after study on unit thermal costs. Talk to whoever pays the AC/heat bills.
Get a group together and advertize free consulting to lower heat/AC costs. Promote
winners of regular improvement contests; publish how they did it. Put their photo in the article. Put it on the web or the local community newsletter or newspaper. Buy badges with a professional logo to wear when you go consulting. Dress nice but casual. Take tools with you to measure stuff. Take a compass to note the orientation. Take a picture book of green stategies. Make appointments so people have time to sit down with you and learn as they look at pictures. Choose the photos carefully and create books tailored to the income bracket of the utility bill payer of the property in question, which may not necessarily be who owns it or lives in it. Females go in pairs - it's the security, stupid.
That's enough brain-storming for one morning. More later.
We are post-modern Johnny Appleseeds.
