Sustainable Lansing

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Take Back The Future

On May 15 (10-4pm) at Lansing Community College, the group "Sustainable Lansing" hosts a community forum to take back the future.

Sustainable development can secure a community's future by creating good jobs, improving the environment and quality of life, saving money, strengthening the local economy, and building trust.

To place sustainability in the forefront of community decision making, the forum will bring together people from across the community to begin a dialogue on what we want Lansing to be like in 50 years. This is an opportunity to redefine progress and
take charge of the direction we want to go.

Keynote speaker Michael Shuman, author of Going Local: Creating Self Reliant Communities in a Global Age, offers new ideas that are taking hold all across the country. An opening poster session and afternoon small group discussions will take stock of efforts in this area and help to shape plans for next steps.

More than a year ago some 40 concerned citizens - the "green team" - began meeting to discuss sustainability. We wrote a declaration of principles, then held a seminar among groups involved in local indicator work. In November we spoke to East
Lansing's Commission on the Environment, and now host the area wide forum.

Endorsed by dozens of local groups, including the cities of Lansing and East Lansing, the forum will highlight connections among economic, community and environmental concerns.

Our overall well being depends on how things fit together. A good environment, healthy people, trust in the community, a strong local economy, solid education - all depend on each other. Increasing incomes by itself doesn't make us better off, if it also costs more to support a family, we get sick more often, or new wealth quickly exits the community. So we need to focus on the whole picture if we want genuine improvement to happen. And everyone who lives here has something to contribute to that picture!

What do we want to sustain and improve? How can we measure it? Together with two follow-up workshops (June 22 and 26), the forum will help people answer these questions themselves and begin to bring about a community vision. By developing measures of the future we want and using them to mount yearly reports of progress, we can sustain an integrated focus that supports diverse community voices over the decades.

Sustainable Lansing's web site is under development at http://urbanoptions.org. Check there for more information or call Urban Options (337-0422 or toll free 1-888-999-MICH). The forum is open to all with an optional donation of $10-25.
Suggestions and help are welcome at any time. Join with us. By committing some of your time you can help to shape the kind of community you want - the one our grandchildren will inherit in the next century.

Phil Shepard
Forum Planning Committee Chair
Professor Emeritus, MSU

Send e-mail to: Information@UrbanOptions.org or shepard@msu.edu

Last Updated: July 15, 1999

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