Nous ferons changer le monde! We are going to change the world!
If it is not you my little one, who will begin to change the world, who will do it?*
Sustainable Surburbia is about trying to live more sustainably in suburban and urban environments. That can mean anything from installing solar power, to planting fruit trees or raising your own free-range chickens, to making your own clothes, to reducing your general consumption, engaging with your local community, and joining a LETS program or your local food co-op. It’s a journey people make in different ways and sometimes different directions. We’re not about judgement here, just information. So if you have an opinion or experience to share, or a question to ask, dive in and leave a comment.
Our editor is based in Australia, but we have regular writers in the UK and NZ and a lot of our regular readers are in the US. We strive to provide quality information for a global, English speaking, audience.
Why sustainable surburban living?
More and more of the world’s populations live in urban or suburban environments. In Australia most people live in the cities, which effectively means most people live in the suburbs. Sure, sea changes and tree changes are becoming popular at least in theory and they sound lovely, but the reality is, across the world, more people are moving into cities than out of them.
We choose to stay in the cities for a host of reasons which include proximity to grandparents, friends, school, health and other facilities and jobs. For reasons of time, money and energy use, it’s nice to be close to all these things.
While the idea of a tree change, or better yet a sea change, is certainly appealing, we believe the future for most people is really in the cities, and we have to learn how to be sustainable within them, how to treat to them as their own little (or not so little) ecosystems and work towards self sufficiency within them, as much as possible.
About the Editor
Sustainable Suburbia’s editor, Kirsten McCulloch, is an Australian mother of three who lives in the suburbs. She has a background in writing and editing, particularly for the web, and a life long interest in living sustainably.
Nonetheless, she will be the first to tell you that she is still struggling to reduce her energy and resource consumption. She keeps chooks, has a few fruit trees (not as many as she’d like), and a mostly organic vegetable patch. She is learning to knit and crochet but she can’t sew to save her life. She also op-shops badly when it comes to clothes for herself, though better when it comes to her kids.
She is trying hard to declutter her home. Slowly. She does a lot of from-scratch cooking (including making her own yoghurt). She also frequently uses shop bought pasta sauces, frozen vegetables and the occasional packet-mix cake, and almost never bakes her own bread. She is trying to teach her children to value the natural environment and not to waste resources, with somewhat patchy success to date.
Kirsten also had a personal blog in which she talks about her family’s efforts to become more sustainable in their suburban home. But she lost the password and her corrupt wordpress installation won’t give it back, so until she gets around to reinstalling wordpress, that blog is there for history only!
About the Contributors
Sustainable Suburbia’s regular contributors are Angela Christensen, a writer from New Zealand with a Masters degree in Sustainable Communities, Eileen O’Sullivan, a freelance writer from England with a background in food gardening, and David Bay, and Australian freelance writer.
Sustainable Suburbia accepts guest posts on a variety of relevant topics, and has – at the moment – a very small budget for commissioned articles (bios appear at the bottom of the article), and the rest is written by Kirsten. If you would like to submit an article for consideration, please see our submission guidelines.
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*This is from a french postcard quoted by Professor Ian Lowe in his foreward to the 2010 edition of Sustainable House.
