Designing Green Communities

Designing Green Communities is part of Crabtree’s “Design Thinking for a Better World” series. Each book in the series uses a six-step design thinking process to explore one aspect of communities:

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
6. Reflect

After explaining the design thinking process, Designing Green Communities explores three projects which each deal with green communities. Each project then presents three cases and asks students to choose a ‘case’ to explore more fully using the design thinking process. The case studies give the students choices among very concrete examples.

The projects in Designing Green Communities look at “Increasing Pollution”, “Impact of Non-renewable Energy”, and “Large Ecological Footprints”. The cases used to explore these projects come from around the world, including a case from Canada on “Effects of Oil Sand Tailings Ponds on Migrating Ducks”.

Each book includes several highlighted Change Makers. The first in Designing Green Communities is Simon Jackson from British Columbia who started the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition. “His campaign connected with more than six million people in 87 countries.”

The photos are well-chosen to illustrate the text and engage the students in the topics. The layout of the text is easy to read with clear text, highlighted text boxes, and attractive visual aids to draw attention to various aspects of the organization of the information. For example, Designing Green Communities includes a text box with an example of a 2x2 matrix and instructions on how to use it to organize the information collected in the “Empathize” step.
Also included are instructions for how to empathize, suggestions for how to pick the best idea to move forward, getting started, “Mindset Tips”, and many more very concrete strategies for each step of the design thinking process.

Designing Green Communities ends with some examples of students around the world who are making a real difference as well as some suggestions for things that students can do “to promote environmentally sustainable practices and make your community a green community:

• Join a group that is promoting green community projects. This may inspire you to develop a new solution to an ongoing problem.
• Do research to learn more about green community projects. How could you adapt these ideas for use in your own community?
• What environmental issue are you passionate about? How can you learn more about how the issue affects your community?"

Designing Green Communities encourages and supports students to become change makers in very concrete ways. If you are interested in using a design thinking process to explore environmental issues with the intent to create action, you should have a look at this book.