Goshen College Environmental Science
Engaging academia with local and global issues of sustainability
We seek to make ourselves aware of our connections to global issues of peace, justice, and environmental stewardship while seeking local solutions in which we can actively be agents of change.
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Jan 08, 2009
Updated: Nov 05, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
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About [Edit]
The Village Design Institute [VDI] is an educational nonprofit registered in the State of Washington. VDI was founded for the purpose of creating, organizing, and disseminating a scientific, multi-disciplinary knowledge resource base intended for promoting and facilitating the design and implementation of sustainable human settlements for the 21st century. A fundamental working premise at VDI - and thus the namesake - is that the designing of truly sustainable settlements is most effectively conceived and accomplished at village-scale, with all that implies. We have elaborated this declaration in an essay entitled “Fundamentals of Village Design,” a title that will be expanded into textbook format.
At VDI, we take sustainability seriously, so seriously in fact that we are actively moving out of the indigent, 20th century ‘sustainability’ mindset. We are beginning to theorize, design, and think in terms of ‘beyond sustainability,’ beyond conditions of mere steady-state material maintenance to situations where human and planetary potential is being actualized – stirring, thriving, flourishing – in full evolutionary plenitude. Is it possible to include ‘consciousness expansion’ as a design criterion? For more on this perspective see the essays “Sustainability 1” and “Sustainability 2.”
At VDI, we believe that the emerging vision of the ‘ecovillage’ is the obvious solution to the ecological, economic, cultural, and spiritual challenges facing humanity at this dawning of a new millennium. We want to take the opportunity top explore ‘ecovillage design’ from a scientific, multi-disciplinary, educational perspective. Therefore, VDI defines ‘ecovillage’ as the sustainable ‘unit’ of human settlement in a theoretical ekistics for the 21st century.
Ecovillage Design Course covers:
Permaculture Fundamentals
Ekistics
Methodologies of Ecological Design and Whole Systems Design
Patterns in Nature
"A Pattern Language," and "Design with Nature,"
Feng Shui and Sacred Geometry
Living Systems Theory
EMergy and Energetics
Community and Environmental Economics
Appropriate Technology
Self-reliant Food Systems
The Global Ecovillage Network
Peak Oil and a Post-carbon Future, etc.
At VDI, we take sustainability seriously, so seriously in fact that we are actively moving out of the indigent, 20th century ‘sustainability’ mindset. We are beginning to theorize, design, and think in terms of ‘beyond sustainability,’ beyond conditions of mere steady-state material maintenance to situations where human and planetary potential is being actualized – stirring, thriving, flourishing – in full evolutionary plenitude. Is it possible to include ‘consciousness expansion’ as a design criterion? For more on this perspective see the essays “Sustainability 1” and “Sustainability 2.”
At VDI, we believe that the emerging vision of the ‘ecovillage’ is the obvious solution to the ecological, economic, cultural, and spiritual challenges facing humanity at this dawning of a new millennium. We want to take the opportunity top explore ‘ecovillage design’ from a scientific, multi-disciplinary, educational perspective. Therefore, VDI defines ‘ecovillage’ as the sustainable ‘unit’ of human settlement in a theoretical ekistics for the 21st century.
Ecovillage Design Course covers:
Permaculture Fundamentals
Ekistics
Methodologies of Ecological Design and Whole Systems Design
Patterns in Nature
"A Pattern Language," and "Design with Nature,"
Feng Shui and Sacred Geometry
Living Systems Theory
EMergy and Energetics
Community and Environmental Economics
Appropriate Technology
Self-reliant Food Systems
The Global Ecovillage Network
Peak Oil and a Post-carbon Future, etc.
