Stylus/Earthscan - Kitchen Table Sustainability: Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability

Kitchen Table Sustainability

Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability

Wendy Sarkissian , Nancy Hofer , Yollana Shore , Steph Vajda , Cathy Wilkinson

Paper: 978-1-84407-614-7
Price: $32.95

Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
December 2008 , 242 pp., 5 3/4" x 8 1/4"
figures & photos
Series: Tools for Community Planning

Kitchen Table Sustainability offers a unique view of sustainability through the lens of community engagement. It takes sustainability out of the ivory towers of universities, government departments and planners to the kitchen tables of the world.

This practical guide distils decades of wisdom from community planning, engagement and sustainability practice internationally into a user-friendly and engaging book that is both inspirational and packed with hands-on tools. The core of the book is a bottom-up approach to participatory community engagement and development, referred to as EATING, that consists of six components: Education, Action, Trust, Inclusion, Nourishment and Governance.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Professor Peter Newman
‘Perhaps the World Ends Here‘ by Jo Harjo
Preface

1: Introduction
2: The Sustainability Story
3: Community Engagement: A Pathway to Sustainability
4: The EATING Approach...
5: Education
6: Action
7: Trust
8: Inclusion
9: Nourishment
10: Governance
11: Conclusions, Challenges and a Way Forward

Index

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Companion Site

Press Release

Reviews & Endorsements:

"Sometimes the best way to handle a community is to boil it down to the simplest version of it - the kitchen table. Kitchen Table Sustainability: Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability is a guide to community planning that takes an approach of the family meeting at the kitchen table as its model for success. Aiming to be user friendly yet still highly effective, the book breaks down its methods in a frank and honest, but easy to remember manner. Kitchen Table Sustainability is a fine pick for those in charge of their community's meeting sto discuss its future."
- The Midwest Book Review

"A practical guide for achieving sustainability of the environment through community involvement, the authors--all experienced in the field of community planning--offer current opinions and insights into strategies to achieve the many goals surrounding the maintenance of an enduring ecosystem. Using the metaphor of the 'kitchen table,' the authors urge that all citizens have opportunities to express themselves in community development only through mutual respect of fellow citizens and their values can planning options succeed. To put it more succinctly, successful community planning starts from the bottom up."
- Chicago Botanic Garden

"Wendy Sarkissian and colleagues come through again, giving us fresh ideas and perspectives."
- John Forester , Cornell University

"This timely book opens the door so that the theory and practice of sustainability can enter into the experience of the everyday ... [Wendy Sarkissian] has pioneered innovative planning and development approaches in an astonishing variety of contexts."
- Beth Offenbacker, Chair of the American Planning Association International Division

"Heads up for the brilliance and warmth of Kitchen Table Sustainability! Because the book is rooted in the human scale, it exudes the aroma of possibility."
- Chellis Glendinning, award-winning author of My Name Is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization

"Offers accessible, insightful thinking about the most daunting challenge facing 21st century cities."
- Leonie Sandercock , University of British Columbia

"Drawn from a lifetime of experience ... and a wide reading of the pertinent literatures, this is a primer of community planning for a turbulent age."
- John Friedmann, School of Public Affairs, UCLA

"The authors' metaphor of a kitchen table is brilliant, and this is a large and welcoming table indeed, with room for all to squeeze around it... This is a book rich in practical insights and advice, useful processes, engagement tips and strategies, and successful stories told."
- Timothy Beatley , University of Virginia

"A book to be savored... The process will generate hope and will help communities to face whatever else life will throw at them."
- From the Foreword by Peter Newman , Curtin University, Western Australia

"A powerful, reflective contribution by this great pioneering practitioner and her team on the vital importance of community engagement for achieving local and global sustainability."
- Nick Wates, author of The Community Planning Handbook and The Community Planning Event Manual and editor of communityplanning.net

"Loaded with examples of good practice in the operation of voluntary groups and coalitions... Definitely recommended reading for community activists."

"Useful and thought-provoking information."

More Reviews...

Related Titles by Subject:
See Community Organizing ( Environment & Conservation ) and Sustainable Development ( Environment & Conservation )