Sex up 'Sustainability'

It looked so good.

The series linked topics like digital lifestyles, U.S. race relations and "high culture" condo marketing to sustainability. Wide-ranging, provocative, timely, Living the Global City was supposed to prepare locals for Vancouver's role as host of the United Nations World Urban Forum next summer. It looked like, for a change, sustainability-ed was going to be done in thought-provoking style.

Haven't heard of the World Urban Forum? That's part of the problem. Touted as the second largest event in British Columbia this decade after the Olympics, thousands of "opinion leaders from around the globe" will meet to address the rapid urbanization of the planet and, hopefully, help facilitate a global transition to sustainability.

But while the forum may be second only to the Olympics in terms of scale, it's trailing far behind in the public awareness department. So in the eight months before the forum begins, the Living the Global City series, sponsored by UBC, was supposed to bring Vancouver denizens up to speed through lectures, panel discussions and community events.

Sample events include analysis of the "enduring modernity" of London, Marshall McLuhan-esque musings about the planet being a human prosthesis wired together by electronic media, and exploring putting participatory budgeting-Brazil's wildly successful experiment in radical democracy-to work on our own turf. The series is even willing to examine the underpinnings of that greatest of Vancouverite obsessions: real estate, asking 'Who owns the city?' and looking at how the property economy and the personal economy relate to sustainability.

'Communications problem'

The line-up was a welcome change from the usual anti-SUV rant and "consume-less" sustainability drone, and people responded enthusiastically. Over 400 people packed the audience for the inaugural event on October 21, a panel discussion featuring former Vancouver mayor and B.C. premier Mike Harcourt plus local sustainability gurus. By one estimate, over half the crowd was under 30, a demographic the sustainability-types are desperate to get on board.

The results?

"I couldn't bear to sit through the whole thing, and I'm totally into this stuff," said Dale Littlejohn, a senior manager with Deloitte Consulting, and a board member of the British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association. "I can't imagine what it was like for people who were just checking it out. We need to make sustainability come alive for regular people, and old white guys droning onstage doesn't cut it." Other attendees described the talk as stultifying, unfocussed and self-congratulatory.

In response to the criticism, Brad Foster of UBC's External Affairs Department blamed the topic of sustainability itself, which he says is complex and difficult to communicate. He also fingered academics for not understanding how to get their point across. "It's a communications problem," he explained.

Facts vs. vision

Suzanne Hawkes, Senior Strategic Counsel with the non-profit PR firm IMPACS says that particular problem is an old one. "Environmental activists often still use an outmoded 1970s communications model: 'If you give them the info, they will change!' But it doesn't work; most of us just don't act because of information. We act based on emotion, cultural frames, and (often unconscious) values. To be effective, educators need to focus on the benefits, the vision and the solutions."

There are people managing to effectively combine the medium and the message regarding sustainability issues, says Dale Littlejohn. "It's not rocket science: Check Your Head gets people taking about real issues in clubs, the Better World Handbook used a mini folk-fest approach, and the recent Car Free Day in Gastown was great."

But Living City series organizer Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe believes that criticism of the Living City's inaugural event merely reflects the nascent state of sustainability awareness: "Alas, the need to revisit some of the basic questions is evident in the fact that public opinion still remains relatively uninterested in considering the requirements of sustainable development."

Sustainability is all about changing patterns of behaviour that are ultimately counter-productive. If nothing else, the first Living City event-albeit unintentionally-raised interesting questions regarding whose behaviour really needs to change.

Dorothy Bartoszewski is a Vancouver writer.