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Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles: Identifying Sustainable Communities in China, India and Brazil

The Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles project set out to investigate the ways small groups of people in China, Brazil and India are doing everything from eating to babysitting, in order to pinpoint new patterns of sustainable living. The team wanted to know if grass roots efforts to create eco-friendly lifestyles could provide a model for larger urban populations in these large consumer economies.

After a year, the researchers discovered that environmentally and socially conscious Brazilians are forming carpool groups to reduce pollution, traffic and transit costs. Senior citizens in China are living in communal housing, rather than with their families, and providing services such as tutoring and babysitting to other families as a way to keep connected with their communities.

In both China and Brazil, small farmers are establishing ties with consumer groups in large cities that want to buy “shares” of their seasonal harvest in return for supply of fresh, typically organic, produce. People have set up “local exchange systems” in which they spend an hour doing a chore for someone, and in return, receive “time currency” to spend on a service provided by another person.

In each case, people are re-creating their social circles, building trust, and organizing themselves in ways that buck traditional lifestyle norms – most times in a conscious effort to create social cohesion and reduce the negative impacts of their day-to-day living on the environment.

The researchers also noticed that their behaviour was not all that different from people living in industrialized European countries, including Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Poland. What was different was the way in which these small communities came about. For example, food purchase groups in India relied on daily food delivery from street vendors, whereas similar groups in Europe placed weekly orders with local farmers, as transporting food each day would increase their carbon footprint.

To draw such comparisons, the team tapped academic institutions in Guangzhou, Rio de Janeiro and Ahmedabad, which identified 40 examples of sustainable living in China, Brazil and India. Together, with three local design schools, they held seminars and design workshops for NGOs, universities, civil society groups and the general public, to generate debate. Could these grass-roots efforts be replicated by more people in large cities? Could design techniques applied in Europe be useful in these different countries?

Proposing such ideas got a valuable social conversation going, says Lara Penin, one of the project’s managers at renowned Italian design school DIS-Indaco Politecnico di Milano. “People can look at them and say, ‘yes, that could be good for me as well’.”

The Creative Communities project is funded by the Task Force for Sustainable Lifestyles. Led by Sweden, its goal is to develop strong and socially cohesive communities.


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