Designing Systems Interventions
Pittsburgh 2070 — Starting the path away from waste. Paper 3/3
Team Complexity | Christopher Costes, Christianne Francovich, Donna Maione, Bhakti Shah
In this assignment, designing ecologies of interventions, our team created a vision of 2070 of a preferred future where the wicked problem of waste management is resolved. We then backcasted from this future vision to the present by creating milestones and events, which would lay the transition pathway. From this process, we developed and ecology of interventions that could to enacted in the present that might begin us towards the road of our preferred future. This research was developed and synthesized using the previous work on the Wicked Problem Map, Multi-Layer Perspective (MLP), and the Causal Layer Analysis (CLA). The scalar framework of Domains of Everyday Life was used on each intervention to identify synergies across scale.
To introduce our findings we will begin with two narratives from our imagined future, one from the individual level, and one on a global scale. Then we will explain the four milestones identified by our backcasting to show how our imagined future might become our own. This is followed by an explanation of our three interventions and their interrelatedness as an ecology. Finally, we discuss our working process, challenges, and insights.
Future Narratives
Introduction to 2070
If we close our eyes and project ourselves forward 50 years from now, what do we see? This question we asked ourselves as we began to visualize a world where the wicked problems of waste are solved. The creation of such a future was not as a means of creating fiction, but rather to give us a direction to aim and backcast from, and to recommend interventions that could start in the present. With this in mind, we created an ideal future from an individual's perspective and of a global narrative. In both cases, the goals were not to show the most realistic future but instead to be adventurous by creating a world that imagines new answers to the problem of waste.
Individual Narrative
Portia wakes up, greeted by the sounds of the morning birds, and if they listen carefully, there is the faintest sound of the community resource collection. It’s the last Monday of the month, which means yesterday the community spent most of the day considering the misused resources for the month. Each member compares and presents their data visualizations among the community, and it is once again just below the limit of excess. They are lucky. As one of the larger and older neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, they have a higher threshold than most.
While some communities only need resource collection two to three times a year, Portia’s community is visited every month, a fact that has always bothered Portia. At nearly 15 years old, she only knows her communities to have relied on local means of production and making. They have everything needed to support each other. Even the rare items that can’t be printed or made locally are prepared for years in advance to offset the cost of such a costly move, so where do all the excess resources come from? After school at the Library, Portia spends the free time between C-101: Responsible Printing and S-201: Global Localism to review the publicly available community resources and double-check the entire city’s reuse and repair procedures. She’s even run a few of the higher rated open-source machine learning programs to see if there might be a better way, and still, Portia has not solved the mystery.
Rolling out of bed and looking out the window, Portia sees the resource collect crew begin their drive through the neighborhood. In this neighborhood, rarely did the pickups require more than a few baskets, but they always insisted on driving their giant green car with at least one person holding onto the back. “Tradition” they called it when Portia asked, also explaining how they distilled the water themselves that was needed for the batteries. Looking out the window Portia sighed and waved at the resource collection member as they waved back. Even with 1000+ people to support, two pounds of extra resources just felt like such a huge amount set out at the curb. Portio knew that the resource collection members wouldn’t let it go to waste, but she also felt that there must be a better way. Getting ready for school, Portia felt a new preparedness to find an intervention that would bring them down to a goal set so long ago, Zero Waste.
Global Narrative
The world now values the Earth’s resources as the primary driver of economics. Natural Capital is the accounting system in which all exchanges are valued. From personal electronic devices to food and consumer goods, to how we acquire these items, everyday life relies more and more on local communities. The government supports local and grassroots communities with a “no voice unheard’ policy. Technology helps us accomplish these collective goals.
On a global scale, we still suffer from environmental damages from the extractive, the linear economy of the past, however, all corporations are now B Corps, which must adhere to the Drawdown Protocol* All C corps were to convert or close. Technology has been instrumental in solving the Trash 20s, and now we rely on citizen engagement and collectivism as a way forward to keep waste a thing of the past.
Local makers within communities of the neighborhood and bioregional networks come together to form an ecology of making, sharing, recycling. Place-based maker groups collectively barter resources, reuse old material, and continue to make and craft in smaller niche circles.
Backcasting: a Transition Pathway
Intro
The practice of backcasting is what we used to create a Transition Pathway from the preferred future shared above to the present. This path consists of four milestones situated within the 50 years previous to our future. Each section explores and a selection of events, political/social movements, changes in attitudes/norms/beliefs, new practices, technologies, that will be required for our future to take hold. Starting with the world that is closest to our future we’ll move backward in time to show how we might move from our current world to one that has addressed the wicked problem of waste in Pittsburgh.
Milestone 4
As the milestone closest to our ideal future, there have been some notable events both in Pittsburgh and the larger world. For example, a return of the wilderness and region taking pride in how much-untouched wilderness they can support. Nearly everything is made locally and grown within specific localities to maximize waste reductions. Technology continues to be the primary tool utilized by people to understand the impacts they are making and where they might be improved. Success for any endeavor on any scale means that what is put into a process and what the end result is are all accounted for and given a purpose. This mindset is educated and informed through learning institutions that teach finding a use for everything and technologies that allow interventions to improve how each community manages its resources. With a foundation in education and information, community actions embrace a new understanding of growth that includes death and resist dualities like good or bad.
Corporations still exist but are bound closely to people before profits. They are closely tied to creating value throughout a product’s life cycle and generating wealth defined by how much a person has given back to the planet. Designing with the environment and the next century in mind are common business practices and success is noted by community-supported feedback loops. Much of the most successful companies are partnered directly with cities to facilitate and help other regions achieve their sustainability goals or learn to re-use and repair the heaviest areas of old extractive practices.
Much of the world in this milestone has begun cycles that are nearly zero waste and shared culture and understanding continue to grow through both local and digital interfaces. However, there is still work to be done, and even with a UBI now in place and the ability for each community to fairly provide for their citizens has been established, far from center politics that champion “right to waste” reveal that there is still work to be done. There are also still unanswered questions like the role of non-human entities as voting citizens, the growing role of bio tools, and the future relationships between nature, humans, and machines. In this time, people are closer than ever to their local world and aware of the global needs of the planet, but most importantly they are well informed and accepting the changes still required.
Milestone 3
Moving farther from the ideal future of zero waste, stress on the system between the new ways and the old ways of waste management begins to fade. Many of the previous investments of new ways of “doing” begin to pay off as sustainability continues to succeed and show stability independent of the initial investments. Proof of this success comes in many forms, such as social security paying dividends for the first time in decades as a result of investments in sustainable communities and wealth management firms like Blackrock declaring, “Anthropocene investments irresponsible.” These changes are supported through federal initiatives like the right to repair, new tax brackets based on how much a person “gives and takes,” and wireless access to each city’s open-source libraries of information. In this competitive but level playing field, state independence slowly gives rise to even more independence given to cities self-sufficient cities like Pittsburgh.
These locally-focused cities begin a larger shift in mindsets and antiquated ideas around growth are reconsidered and the majority sees the planetary and individual benefits of cosmopolitan localism. Status symbols like “The Forbes 30 under 30” are now routinely given to teachers at local libraries, scientists using regional bacteria for food production, and developers making open-source AI’s that support local communities and individuals reduce waste. Rather than profits, creating efficient systems of circular production or new ways to reuse the resources in landfills become the hallmarks of entrepreneurial spirit. It is in the era that we begin to see sustainability’s new ideas of growth take hold and as a result, larger and systematic changes take place within Pittsburgh and the world.
Milestone 2
In this milestone, we begin to see the first signs of a global recovery and the beginning of the movement for sustainability as a dominant trend. Already there have been huge reductions in waste from shipping and manufacturing as much of Pittsburgh has turned towards more local ways making and as financials and medical crises have crippled much of the world’s means of mass production. As a way to continue this reduction trend, local communities engage with technology to further support waste reduction and local making as a means to remain self-sufficient and stable. It is this same stability, application of technology, and community goals of zero waste that make cities like Pittsburgh lucrative investments for funds desperate for non-volatile growth.
This marks the beginning of a larger shift as funds are invested in cosmopolitanism localism and placed a bet that its stability will reflect a slow but steady reward. In a ceremonious gesture in support of these behaviors, the little funds left within social security is fully invested in sustainability projects. The momentum is only further pushed when AI traders start almost exclusively investing in sustainable communities. Supporting the strength of these actions are a series of federal initiatives such as “a Garden in Everyone Home” and the release of all non-violent military printing templates. The combination of all this new funding, new incentives, and new tools allows Pittsburgh and other cities to fully commit to a future of self-sufficiency and secure a long term plan.
As a result of some of the first “optional mask” days in years, traveling does begin again but with a new emphasis on education, sustainable ways of travel, cultural exchange between areas have been physically distant for a long time. Simultaneously, research institutes around the world and within Pittsburgh develop groundbreaking ways to produce biofuels, make more effective batteries, and reduce the growing carbon footprint of the internet. This time in Pittsburgh’s history marks the first fruits of the initial investments into more sustainable ways of living and conscious effort by the world to support a new system of governance. These collective support factors allowed the foundation for a new system to be built rather than continued reliance on the old system.
Milestone 1
Moving closer to the present, trends of global pandemics continue to produce a second economic collapse after a false start near the end of COVID-19 and potentially new zoological viruses. This makes it abundantly clear that the current methods of governmental capitalism and authoritarianism are increasingly unpredictable. Compiling these factors are the continued failure of mono cultured plants and antibiotics resistant bacterial strains begin to outpace new antibiotics, making large scale centralized animal raising a system ripe for collapse. The consistently slow response to a number of crises has meant a shrinking in government services. This in combination with the constant failure of larger private services has given rise to a high number of community and city-focused organizations. With more political power and responsibility, cities like Pittsburgh begin to exhibit a more locally-focused but globally aware way of governance to support citizen education and involvement.
This continued movement towards localism accompanied by increased digital forms of communication as a global culture online becomes stronger even while physical distances become harder to navigate. Also among these changes, technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, producing new ways of serving basic needs and resulting in AI so complex that scholars debate the coming importance of consent for AI labor. Cities also begin to leverage these advances in technology and continue to leverage data as a means to inform and improve resource management. Overall, this time period begins a number of important factors, but most notably there are continued crises that expose and stretch the current global system, forcing many to begin the search for alternatives.
Changes of Mindset
The backcasting exercise shows a great span of activity that will be needed to create the future we’ve imagined. However, our most important takeaway was that our future will also require a significant shift in mindset both in Pittsburgh and globally. Some of the most important changes will need to in growth, environment, globalization, waste, local, and sustainability.
Each milestone in our Transition Path is vital, but so are these larger and specific changes in mindset for the success of our future and for the problem of waste to be anything close to solved.
Designing Interventions
Introduction to Intervening
Intervening on any level should be by invitation. There are far too many examples of interventions that did not include the community’s best interests. New York City, for example, has had neighborhoods destroyed with city planners like Robert Moses that are part of the infrastructure that will last for a century or longer. To design interventions toward a sustainable and equitable future, we recognize that there needs to be a full range of stakeholders that are representative of the community during the creation, timing, and delivery of any planned intervention. To intervene is to occur in a place and time either in events or in policy. It marks a moment in time, so the place and timing of intervention is as critical a factor as the design of the interventions itself. Without place-based consideration, interventions will lose relevance and traction in the implementation phase.
Ecology of Interventions
Ecologies of interventions help to address interconnected wicked problems. The problems with waste management can also be linked to air pollution, public health, urban land use. The point is that no one intervention can solve a wicked problem. While the interventions below would be implemented by separate agencies, we see some cross-cutting benefits and synergies that scaffold the pathway toward a future vision of zero waste in Pittsburgh.
These interventions proposed below are based on a class assignment and our past research of the wicked problem, the Multi-Level Perspective framework, and the Causal Layered Analysis. In the process of defining the interventions below, we did not interview any community stakeholders, and therefore we propose this as a demonstration of ecologies of interventions that are nested within the scalar framework of Domains of Everyday Life from individuals, household, neighborhood, city, region, and planet.
Design Intervention 1: Being Informed Through Smart Waste Management System
Level of Scale: City: Department of Public Works
A major problem with understanding waste management at the consumer level is due to the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. The waste generated by a single consumer is never quantified. The numbers associated with waste generation are not readily available. The lack of transparency leads to a lack of awareness and accountability. A single consumer never realizes how they are contributing to the larger problem of waste. Since the past 70–80 years, the waste management system has hardly changed. Both parties need to be informed — The waste collectors as well as the waste generators. Waste collectors need to be informed to have better op-ex. Consumers need to be informed to increase awareness and accountability.
This ecology of solutions builds off on a smart waste management intervention called Sensoneo. It is co-funded by the EU and adopted in various countries across the globe.
We see these interventions play out at the city level with the Department of Public Works in charge since it is transforming the city’s waste management system. The benefits of this would touch the lives of various individuals and neighborhoods.
The integrated system would have a variety of interventions, such as:
SubProgram 1: Visualizing efficient trash pathways
Most of the city level municipalities struggle with inefficient and expensive trash pick up routes. For instance, Bratislava city leverages Smart Route Planning function that automates the management of waste collection routes based on precise, pre-defined data about fleets, depots, and landfills. It optimizes the use of collection vehicles and helps you find the most efficient process in terms of time and costs.
Sub Program 2 Data Visualization: Understanding your waste and making data-driven decisions
One can see this as almost getting a report card for the trash you are generating. One of the major problems we have seen is that there is no accountability when it comes to waste. Who is responsible? Is it the Producer’s responsibility? Is it the consumer’s responsibility or should it just be the government’s responsibility? We can say that if we want a shift from mindless consumption, every household must understand how much waste they are producing, and how they are exacerbating the problem. Getting an insight into one’s consumption pattern is extremely important. These insights help guide decisions and even change behavior. We see our electricity, gas, water, and various other utility usage being quantified, which has set a mindset that these utilities must not be wasted.
How does the intervention connect to both the near-term and the long-term vision?
Material and/or NonMaterial Features
These interventions are more reliant on technology to paint a clearer picture. It configures, monitors, and helps manage waste through data processing. Data-driven decisions can be taken through smart analytics and route optimization is achieved through smart route planning. Through the use of material features, one can expect to have an impact on non-material features such as attitudes, beliefs, values, cultural, social, and disciplinary norms. We can hope to see this connection of personal consumption and waste generation to one’s identity. Decisions can then be made by seeing the data around the waste and consumers can be more mindful while purchasing products. With an extension to the block cleanup challenge, one will make decisions that are for the greater good of the entire community to feel a sense of belonging.
Max-Neef’s theory of needs in mind
The needs that this intervention most directly addresses is understanding (with analysis and study). Understanding because it informs the citizens about their current lifestyle and consumption patterns. It helps them analyze their behavior and perhaps realize that much of what they consume is pseudo satisfiers that don’t really address their needs. It can create a shift from a materialistic mindset.
How does it solve for more than one issue connected to the problem at a time?
Providing information on waste management also focuses on better op-ex. This intervention has already reduced waste collection costs by at least 30% by optimizing the use of resources (fleet, FTEs). It has also reduced carbon emissions in cities up to 60%. We believe that this can help mitigate the Air Quality issue of Pittsburgh.
With the eventual shift in mindful consumption and a more self-reliant community, there should be an overall optimization of the earth’s resources. With data around the major source of waste, this can also empower the governing bodies to make better decisions around policies. Wet waste is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in landfills that can lead to composting as a practice mandatory in every neighborhood. Additionally, we hope that by implementing this intervention through the Public Works Department, it would be available for everybody. Therefore ensuring that this resource is equally distributed over different populations and ultimately empowering citizens.
What are the main barriers to its implementation/success?
The barriers to implementation majorly circle around the reliance on technology and the amount of infrastructure support that would be required to get the technology in place. This intervention should also not be looked at as technology will solve all the problems. This intervention needs support from other interventions such as education and action. Just being informed doesn’t serve the cause. People need to know how they can translate their awareness and knowledge into something actionable.
One also needs to make sure that information received with the help of tech is accessible and inclusive. Most of the data viz projects fall into the problem of poor information and communication design. Especially when it is for a bigger target audience.
How does it project, connect, and amplify each other’s intervention?
The purpose of these interventions is to inform the citizens as well as the governing body managing waste.
Connection to ERRR
The ERRR intervention educates the citizen about the actions they can take. It is important to be informed while understanding how the knowledge gained is contextual to an individual’s situation. What would be applicable and what changes need to made to lead a sustainable lifestyle
Connection to Clean Block Challenge
The clean block challenge focuses on translating the awareness created by the smart waste management system and education from the ERRR into action on a community level. This helps build a peer to peer network. Contemporary neoliberal urban westernized society is mostly designed for either an individual or a large anonymous crowd eg.- Climate change will be fixed by “you recycling” or “government policy” or “a social movement”. Our society needs to be able to create spaces for smaller groups that can collectively make a difference and do meaningful work.
What is the lifespan of this intervention?
These sets of interventions are a small stepping stone towards a larger goal of reducing mindless consumption patterns. Over time these interventions may adapt to new paradigms of waste and technological affordances. Once it is over its phase of ability to make the changes it was intended for, it may not serve as a changemaker but it will in general build a system of transparency and accessible information.
Design Intervention 2: Education for Reduce, Reuse & Recycling (ERRR)
Level of Scale: City
Intro
We believe education is indispensable in achieving a mindset shift towards sustainable living. In this ecology of interventions, we have come up with three concepts that should exist in tandem to address education around reuse and recycling. All three concepts approach the topic with an action-oriented focus making reuse and recycling come to life. Through our concepts, we hope to make reuse education accessible for all generations and socio-economic backgrounds.
We imagine this intervention to play out at the city level because multiple complex organizations would be involved and to create the largest impact all schools & libraries in Pittsburgh would promote Education for Reuse and Recycle (ERRR). Of course, the effects of this intervention would trickle down to the community and even the household level. And if it is a great success we imagine it also influences the region and dare we say planet?
The three supporting programs we envision are:
ERRR @ Elementary Schools
Elementary schools should include education for sustainability in the curriculums, exposing children in their early childhood to ways to make sustainable living decisions now and in the future. We pulled inspiration from the Sustainable Planet Project, initiated in Brisbane Australia by Robert Pratt, a Kindergarten teacher, and Dr. Julia Davis, who did research on the project (2005). The image below illustrates some of the projects they started within their school to promote sustainability in their curriculum.
Reusefest 2.0:
The second program is based on the existing ReuseFest drop-off event that is already being organized every year in Pittsburgh. We believe that dedicating a day to the reuse and recycling initiatives that exist in Pittsburgh is important. Not only to give these companies a platform, but also as a fun way for adults to learn about different possibilities for them to handle their waste, making everybody more aware. At the moment ReuseFest is just a drop-off event meaning, residents can drop off their stuff and it is reused instead of going to landfills. We believe more can be gained from this initiative by for example organizing workshops that allow participants to actively engage.
ERRR @ Public Libraries:
For the third program, we propose that the public libraries in Pittsburgh should start to play a critical role in education around sustainable reuse and recycling practices. Libraries already play a critical role in making education accessible for the public and we believe that in the future they should address the topic of reuse and recycling through maker space style labs. Allowing access for anyone with a library card to learn through the embodiment of making, fixing recrafting materials. The central theme is about recycling the resources in play, reducing landfill.
Because Pittsburgh has a strong and active maker scene we feel this program should leverage that. Possibly in the form of a public-private partnership between Pittsburghs’ maker spaces and the public libraries of Pittsburgh.
How does the intervention connect to both the near-term and the long-term vision?
This table explains how our intervention contributes to the near-term, mid-term, and long-term future we imagine.
Material and/or NonMaterial Features
Most of all this intervention suggests changes in non-material factors such as attitudes, beliefs, values, cultural, social, and disciplinary norms. Education is the most direct way to change attitudes towards waste management because you are literally telling children this is right and this is wrong. Also by targeting education and teaching through doing and playing, we hope to spark conversations at the dinner table between the children partaking in the activity and their parents. The assumption here is that children are likely to call out bad behavior from their parents, and parents want to be a good example for their children. Because (looking back at the personal narrative) what is a more powerful reason to change your habits than when your child asks: “Dad, don’t you kill the earth if you throw the cereal box out with the trash?”, “Don’t you care about my future?”.
Some aspects of this intervention will also require material change, such as the relocation of resources from privately owned makerspaces to publicly owned libraries. Additionally, schools might need materials such as toolkits and possibly equipment.
Max-Neef’s theory of needs in mind
The two needs that this intervention most directly addresses are understanding and creation.
Understanding because it aims to educate citizens on how they can make sustainable choices in their day to day life. Additionally, by learning not only in an individual setting but also through workshops and group lessons, strong community ties can be built. It also fosters curiosity and imagination through making, building, and inventing which is the second need: creation. Providing people with knowledge and resources gives them new skills and abilities which empowers them to take action and be resilient.
How does it solve for more than one issue connected to the problem at a time?
We believe that embedding reuse and recycling education into schools, libraries, and events is the first step to addressing other sustainability issues such as poor air quality, climate change, and deforestation, just to name a few. You could even imagine that if schools started to grow their own gardens again, it could even aid in tackling the decline of bees who are crucial pollinators and food-insecurity. Additionally, we hope that by implementing this intervention into public systems such as libraries and public schools this resource will be available for everybody. Therefore ensuring that this resource is equally distributed over different populations and empowering citizens to take action themselves.
How does it project, connect, and amplify each other’s intervention?
Connection to Smart Waste Management System
The Smart Waste Management System is yet another intervention that makes the waste problem top of mind instead of “out of sight, out of mind”. Together with ERRR we will ensure that people make conscious decisions about how they deal with trash on a day to day basis because the problem is visible and eminent.
Connection to Clean Block Challenge
Because ERR will be promoting the importance of sustainable living through education, the Clean Block Challenge (CBC) will be seen in a more important light by school children and inevitably their parents. Additionally, the library makerspace programs will give neighborhoods in Pittsburgh access to resources and materials to actively engage in reusing their waste making achieving the CBC easier.
What are the main barriers to its implementation/success?
We see two main barriers to implementing this intervention, the first being funding and secondly the inherently complex nature of the education system and trying to intervene in it. Promoting this new vision, not only for the education system but also for libraries will consider significant time and effort. The right interdisciplinary team would have to be built that would be the ambassadors of this program over long horizons of time.
We would like to leverage Pittsburgh’s status as a hub for education and research to push this initiative, possibly partnering with institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University in order to recruit our ambassadors. CMU, for example, is doing an audit on how green their campus is, in this program, there should be a requirement for what CMU does for the sustainability of surrounding neighborhoods and Pittsburgh as a whole. How does CMU give back to the community? Finally, possible funding could come from private universities such as CMU, grants, philanthropy, and maybe government education programs. Currently, interventions like the one we are proposing are funded privately by tech companies such as Google as explained in this article. Although it provides communities with an amazing initial investment, we believe that the ultimate goal should be to be self-reliant and not subject to a privately owned, possibly direction shifting, entity.
What is the lifespan of this intervention?
Our future does not consist of no waste being generated at all, we believe that that futuring is not only impossible to obtain it might also not be preferable because packaging for example also allows us to keep our food from going bad over longer periods of time also improving the sustainability of food production. However, we do strongly feel that the way we consume and the way we throw away has to change. Therefore we believe that this intervention has a very long timespan, sharing knowledge of how to reuse and recycle materials will always remain relevant in our future, and embedding it within education seems like the way to go for the foreseeable future. Plan in the current iteration would last 10 years, at which point we would need to reassess the situation, to ensure that we are moving towards the goal of collective community organizing and cosmopolitan localism, and adjust the approach accordingly.
Design Intervention 3: Clean Block Challenge
Level of Scale: Neighborhood to Household
Introduction
Pittsburgh’s reputation as a dirty city began during the industrial era when coal power plants filled the air with soot. This legacy lingers to this day in spite of the efforts within the city’s initiatives toward waste reduction. The city is still known for its poor air quality and litter and effluent in its rivers. When Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, he defended his retraction by saying that he represents the “City of Pittsburgh, not Paris” This did not sit well with the Steel City Mayor Deputy. Deputy responded that he and the city are in support of the multinational agreement. Pittsburgh, with the support of the 100 Resilient Cities organization has built a strategy toward a cleaner city. The intervention below is in support of the goals of the city. Since the project constraints allowed only desk research we referenced the following materials to set the basis for this project.
In lieu of stakeholder interviews, we used The Roadmap to Zero Waste for the City of Pittsburgh to gain insight into current programming within the city, as well as the Clean Pittsburgh Commission (CPC) to study current initiatives on a community level. Existing engagements with the University of Pittsburgh include a ReUse Fair and the CPC had an open call for projects. We see an opportunity to engage all the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, beyond the college student community.
The Clean Block Challenge, an action-oriented intervention, is a portfolio of programs that would be supported by the CPC with three main goals, (1) increase resource recovery, mainly litter, recyclables, (2) improve citizen stewardship, (3) provide platforms for local synergies. Drawing inspiration from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Green Block Competition, the Clean Block Challenge is an action-oriented intervention that has the following programming, Open Access Workshop, Ambassador Program, and the Clean Block Challenge.
Program — Open Access Workshops
The program begins with public access workshops at schools, libraries, street fairs or open markets. Participants can learn about recycling, the impacts of waste in their neighborhood, and what this means for the future of their city and neighborhood. Individuals or block associations can sign up during events or online for the Clean Block Challenge. Registered participants receive starter kits for block cleaning parties and the rules for the Challenge.
Program — Peer Ambassador Program
The Peer Ambassador Program is open to all local citizens from high school on up. This program fosters land stewardship and leadership development. This program is a great fit for the Pittsburgh Public Schools and other organizations in need of organized community service credits. Ambassadors work within their own neighborhoods, receive mentoring and certificates after one year of service, and would be eligible as an ambassador mentor to incoming community members. The program is a sought after program for its leadership and community organizer skill development, particularly in high schools. Ambassadors will have guided programming on the following areas;
1- Household waste reduction program (Global Green) helps families reduce waste from food to packaging. Students.
2- Technology — data visualization tools and access to Kwilt, in beta starting 2021, a community-based communication tool for collaboration of local projects, designed by Carnegie Mellon’s MDes
3- Ambassador training material and swag, all made of reclaimed and recycled materials.
Program — Citizen Clean Block Challenge
The Clean Block Challenge allows all local citizens from high school on up to enter their block or apartment complex into a cleanup challenge. This is a year-long engagement where everyday citizens become stewards of their designated communities. Weekly group cleanings, self-organized pickups that are site-specific, and neighborhood tours are key activities encouraged and supported through the CPC. This program is an excellent fit for anyone who wants to beautify their home, eliminate litter, and foster a community around them. Anyone with a friendly, competitive nature is welcome. Collaboration with local ambassadors can help spread knowledge of best practices.
The challenge ends in an annual city-wide celebration with many best-in-class winners who are awarded funds or supplies for the community’s use. The friendly competitions between neighborhoods invite others to self-guided tours showing off their improvements and clean up and maintenance projects. Local signage is encouraged to promote the local flavor, which may show off locally made trash bins, reclaimed sculpture parks, and installations.
How does the intervention connect to both the near-term and the long-term vision?
The intervention bridges both the near-term and the long-term vision
Material and NonMaterial Features
Some aspects of this intervention will also require material change, such as the relocation of resources from privately owned makerspaces to publicly owned libraries. Additionally, schools might need materials such as toolkits and possibly equipment.
Artifacts — Processes — Technology
The intervention relies on both printed and online branded training material, the development of the intake, training and mentoring process as well as access to the information systems to track trash and community will also be a needed component to the program success. Underutilized buildings will be the preferred venues for any public programming.
Attitudes -Beliefs — Values & Cultural — Social — Disciplinary Norms
Collectivism, compassion & care, community leadership, eco+resource stewardship, zero waste, interdisciplinary approach in a pluralistic society
Max-Neef’s theory of needs and human-scale development
This program focuses on three fundamental human needs, defined by Max Neef, which are protection, participation, and identity. Through the existential category of action (doing) the activities of the program allow the opportunities for cooperation, taking care (stewardship), and commit oneself, (ambassadors). The program will evolve and develop over time, however, the fundamental human needs will remain the same, but may be expressed differently in programming as culture, and situations evolve.
Solving for more than one issue: connecting to the problem at a time?
Besides reducing the street litter that flows into Pittsburgh’s three rivers, the Clean Block Initiative will also have a positive impact on other wicked problems such as air pollution, public health concerns such as asthma, racial inequity, crime, and more.
Synergies between the Smart Waste Management System and the ERRR programs
The Smart Waste Management System allows citizens and municipal waste officials to gain valuable insights through data that can show areas in most need to Block Challenges, as well as track improvements over time. With the ERR program, school children can learn of the Clean Block Challenge and become early stewards and future ambassadors. Together the three interventions range in scale from city and neighborhood to household.
Intervention Lifespan
The intervention is planned to run for 10 years with a 2-year community handover period of local ownership.
Main barriers to Success
As with all public programs, funding is a significant concern. The CPC has funding as stated in their last committee meeting in 2020, however, this may not be sustainable for a ten year period. Additional funds from private businesses in Pittsburgh would be sought after. Another potential barrier is Ambassador burn out or stewardship fatigue. Careful attention to mentoring and an understanding of intrinsic incentives would help to mitigate this potential barrier to sustained implementation.
Working Process
We started by mapping existing interventions that we had come across during the previous assignments on to the household, neighborhood, city, region, and planet-scale. By doing that we realized that most of the interventions we had found exist on the city level. There was not so much done yet on the neighborhood level, therefore we decided that at least one of our interventions should address that scale — especially because our preferred future focuses on the importance of building community.
While writing out our interventions for this medium post one thing we tried to keep in mind was that we tried to contextualize problems by discussing them in terms of people’s everyday lives, particularly everyday life at the different levels of scale of household, neighborhood, city, etc. How is waste experienced, in the present and future, at each of these different levels of scale? This was also the feedback we received from our CLA analysis in which we took the more of a birds-eye view approach.
Conclusion
Challenges of format
These interventions came into existence without us being informed by stakeholder interviews. Within the constraints of this class, this would not have been possible to do, but we feel like it would pull the interventions that we propose to a higher level if we were to incorporate their feedback.
Another thing we struggled with throughout this process was striking the balance between realistic futures and those from sci-fi movies. How crazy should we let our ideas become? We acknowledge that we could have pushed some of our ideas a little further in terms of innovative qualities of the intervention, but given the time constraint of presenting this amount of interventions within a week and a half, we feel like we can be proud of what we achieved.
What’s missing
It would have been interesting to explore more interventions on the regional and planet level. For this assignment, we restrained ourselves to thinking about the Pittsburgh context, which is why our interventions lie in the household to the city range. However, we did have an interesting discussion about the ocean cleanup, an initiative that started in the Netherlands by a TU Delft graduate, but that aids in cleaning up the world’s oceans and rivers. So you could say that that intervention lies on the planet level even though it came to existence via a much smaller scale. Especially because Pittsburgh is home to many large education and research facilities, innovations coming from Pittsburgh that address global issues would not be too large of a leap to make. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to ideate on and explore possibilities of what interventions could be possible but it would have been extremely interesting to do so.
Insights and Takeaways
We want to conclude by saying: everything is connected. This was told to us by Gideon and Terry in one of the first classes of the semester, but we feel that this was the assignment where that became extremely clear. Especially when answering the following question for each of our interventions: How does it solve for more than one issue connected to the problem at a time? This fact could not be avoided. We felt like we could go on and on in this section listing all of the things it could be connected to. Therefore, we have taken the liberty of providing the reader with one last overview of what we think our intervention addresses by using sustainable development goals as created by the UN.
The irony of the picture is that by listing everything, it really says nothing. But that’s the thing about wicked problems, the problem is so complex and nested within other issues, that the intervention needed to address the issue is equally nested within other interventions. Almost making it feel as if, if you were able to actually solve this problem, many other problems would be solved in the process.
Link to Sources
