Sustainable Communities.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sustainable communities. Not sustainable in the sense that they have a low carbon footprint (although this is an important aspect to creating an economically sustainable community), but in the sense that people want to live there.
Among other things, a sustainable community is facilitated by an infrastructure that encourages interaction and cooperation among its occupants. It leverages human nature to ensure positive outcomes. For example, more outdoor common areas are incorporated into sustainable communities. This results in more interaction between occupants, fulfilling an innate human desire which in turn lowers crime rates and encourages the collective maintenance of common areas. Everyone wants to live in a welcoming, clean neighborhood.
Let’s take low-income housing developments as an example. Instead of forcing underprivileged families into sprawling projects outside of high-rent urban areas, what if cities invested in environments where families actually wanted to live? How would that change the ethos of communities challenged by crime and cyclical poverty? It would be economically beneficial to the city on many levels.
I want to share this PBS program with you because I think it defines sustainable communities quite well. Its 30 minutes long, but i encourage you to set aside the time.
Audi R8’s are beautiful cars.
I’ll take one for a test drive when I get venture-backed.
And buy one when I sell the company.
Every year, there are 3.5 billion people who surfer from a lack of clean water. Of these 3.5 billion people, 3 million kids die each year.
Michael Pritchard explains that “each day…there are millions of people who are forced to drink dirty water or face death.”
His solution is the “LifeSaver” bottle.
Before the LifeSaver bottle, the best filter had pores 200 nanometers in diameter. However, the smallest bacteria are also 200 nanometers wide, so they pass through. The smallest virus is 25 nanometers in diameter. They’re going to pass through as well. However, the LifeSaver bottle has pores that are 15 nanometers wide and is able to sterilize the water so that no bacteria or viruses can harm the drinker.
Check out this awesome demonstration. For $20 billion, everyone in the world can have access to clean drinking water.
Clean Economies 99Designs Contest
We just finished the logo for Clean Economies and posted the new contest to crowdsource the design for the rest of the site.
I’ll be posting more about the experience later. If you’re interested in sustainability, you should follow Clean Economies on Tumblr and Twitter.
Stay tuned for the new site.
This is the new logo for Clean Economies. We crowdsourced the design on 99Designs. Over 3 days, we received 275 logos from 34 designers for just $295.
Understanding crowdsourcing is a bit counterintuitive. But, this is proof that the business model works. I’ll post the complete site design when we’re done crowdsourcing it. Stay tuned…
“Social Production” is the next era after “Social Networking.”
