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Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Universities: Re-Engineering the Campus of Today for the World of Tomorrow

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Abstract

On hundreds, if not thousands, of campuses across the world, courses, policies and infrastructure have been designed and revised in the pursuit of sustainability. A similar goal is pursued by as many cities. But, while there are many policies and many projects, how they fit together and contribute to the larger objective is not at all clear. In this paper, the shortcomings of most sustainability programs and projects in campuses and cities are addressed, and it points towards the need to develop a more-historical, holistic and dynamic “ecosystem” approach. This paper offers several models for working in this direction and a brief case study of “sustainable food” at UC Santa Cruz as a preliminary illustration.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “People,” at: http://universitylivinglab.org/people; “Groupings,” at: http://universitylivinglab.org/organisations (Last Accessed January 20, 2016).

  2. 2.

    “Choosing a Sustainability Undergraduate Degree,” Arizona State University School of Sustainability, at: https://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/degrees/undergraduate/ (Last Accessed January 20, 2016).

  3. 3.

    There does not appear to be any central sustainability website at Aalborg University.

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Acknowledgments

The research for this article was supported by NSF–PIRE Award #1243536, PIRE: US-Denmark Cooperative Research and Education in Intermittency-Friendly Community Scale Renewable Energy Microgrids.

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Correspondence to Ronnie D. Lipschutz .

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Lipschutz, R.D., De Wit, D., Lehmann, M. (2017). Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Universities: Re-Engineering the Campus of Today for the World of Tomorrow. In: Leal Filho, W., Skanavis, C., do Paço, A., Rogers, J., Kuznetsova, O., Castro, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47889-0_1

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