Sustainable Systems

(Un)sustainable cultural practices and initiatives often fall short of their intended, long-term functionalities because of an inherent lack of systemic thinking. It is becoming increasingly evident that the most impending crises humanity faces today  – those that concern the climate, socioeconomics, politics, the environment – cannot be delineated into and treated siloed problems. A critical change in perception is necessary: systems thinking must be elevated to the forefront of our dynamic framework of ideologies, morals, and values. Sustainable development, which is largely fragmented and discontinuous across the globe, is currently suffering from a distinct lack of systemic contextualization. This has ultimately resulted in the genesis of ever-problematic feedback loops of initiatives and technological advancements that only exacerbate problems of capitalistic global extractivism, all while operating under the tricky guise of "sustainable development."

This paper explores various integrative frameworks that are contributing to anemerging transdisciplinary meta-perspective on sustainable development. It proposes a holistic/integral strategy based on scale-linking design for human and planetary health: First, ‘Integral Theory’, ‘Spiral Dynamics’ and ‘IntegralEcology’ are briefly reviewed as dynamic mapping methodologies to structure,facilitate and mediate between diverse value systems and perspectives of multiple stakeholders and disciplines. Changes in worldview, value system, andintentionality are crucial to the emergence of a sustainable civilization. Second,design is described as a transdisciplinary integrator and facilitator of informeddecision making in the face of uncertainty. Design for systemic health cancatalyse the sustainability transition. Third, the paper outlines how complexitytheory, combined with a holistic conception of health, informs a scale-linkingapproach to sustainable design. Systemic health is a scale-linking, emergent property of healthy interactions and relationships within complex dynamicsystems. The health of human beings, societies, ecosystems and the planetarylife support system is fundamentally interconnected and interdependent.Sustainability, as a process of community-based learning, is expressed throughdesign that is informed by ecological principles and adapted to local, regionaland global limits and opportunities. In general, sustainable design is synergetic,symbiotic, scale-linking, salutogenic and sacred. There is a need to integrateecological, social, cultural, economic and psychological (spiritual)considerations into a flexible and responsive strategy to facilitate thesustainability transition. Design for human and planetary health requires atransdisciplinary dialogue aiming for appropriate solutions and community-basedvisions of sustainability.
Keywords: scale-linking design, complexity, integral ecology, salutogenicdesign, transdisciplinary integration, health, sustainable civilization, vision

The design of sustainable communities and cities requires conceptual frameworks for contextualization and
transdisciplinary integration. The theory of complex dynamic systems provides a holistic, explanatory frame-
work offering a participatory perspective that recognizes the fundamental interconnectedness, interdependence,
and unpredictability of biological, social, economic, and ecological systems. Building on the tradition of urban
planning within a regional context, to conceive the sustainable city as an emergent property of appropriate
interactions and relationships within a complex, holarchically structured whole, takes contextualization further.
Increased awareness of nature and culture as an interconnected complex dynamic system, and sensitivity to
material and immaterial (psychological) aspects, leads to more sustainable solutions based on transdisciplinary
integration. Worldviews and value systems, and ecological literacy play an important role in the creation of sus-
tainable lifestyles, communities, cities and societies. This article suggests that complexity theory, combined with
aspects of integral theory and integral ecology, when applied through design as a transdisciplinary integrator, can
provide a framework and a methodology that links spatial and temporal scales across all scales of design from
product design, architecture, construction ecology, community design, industrial ecology, to urban and biore-
gional planning. Ultimately, a sustainable city emerges from the interactions among sustainable communities of
ecologically and socially literate citizens who live sustainable lifestyles.

Though mostly these days I work on my NOVELTY SCIENCES SCHOOL, I do make papers for conferences and journals at times: on creativity (models more vast, detailed, and comprehensive than others make), on structural cognition (tools for plural models), on design (grammars of and realistic , replacements for prose) processes for), on new media and spaces (frameworks for using, improving, inventing, and understanding them).  You can get a good recent look at my approach and thinking from these four papers, though some need considerable editing still.

Manufacturing companies continue to struggle with simultaneously assessing and reducing supply chain costs and carbon footprint early in the design process as consumers demand more sustainable products. An integrated product design-supply chain design approach is explored and applied to bicycle design. It is shown that the approach can successfully inform decision-makers on the consequences of their choices even when component alternatives are similar.

The concept of interactional expertise (IE) describes the type of knowledge needed to communicate effectively with experts from technical disciplines, even without actually practicing in the discipline. Although hard to acquire, IE can be obtained without hands-on experience. Interactional experts include a variety of critics and journalists, as well as peer-review panelists, all of whom can provide criticism, play devil's advocate, tell insider jokes, assess quality and make context-specific judgments. IE is essential for managers of large scientific organizations, as they are required to interact as experts in a wide range of disciplines in which they may have little or no practical experience. IE is also required of scholars working in multidisciplinary research teams, such as in sustainability. The only reliable way to acquire IE in science is through intensive linguistic socialization with disciplinary experts. Given the emergence of novel, integrative graduate education programs in sustainability, universities should consider how education can accelerate the acquisition of IE for the purpose of conducting collaborative sustainability research. We hypothesize that pedagogical strategies adapted from foreign language teaching can prime students for rapid acquisition of interactional expertise. To test our hypothesis, we designed a pilot course for graduate sustainability students around the central idea that acquiring IE is like acquiring a foreign language. We tested the effectiveness of this approach with novel assessment methods through which we were able to gauge the effectiveness of the course and ensure that students learned fundamental thermodynamics concepts. Preliminary results show that the course improves student communication, presents an alternative to traditional thermodynamic instruction and effectively teaches fundamental concepts.

In order to achieve sustainability the design of the recovery network has to fulfill the different objectives from the economic, social, and environmental perspectives. In this paper a lexicographic integer linear goal programming (ILGP) model is developed to design a multicommodity recovery network for products of modular structure. The model results in locating facilities in a multiechelon network and assigning the products to the different end of life (EOL) options.