Urban Interventions and Civic Incubation for Environmental Sustainability

SOCIOLOGY
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Yes, the urban interventions and civic incubation contribute towards environmentally
supportive behaviour change.
With the increased globalisation and need for the sustainable practices over the years, there
can be seen transformations in cities, to small towns, to office spaces and also the suburban
corridors. Accordingly, there can be seen a considerable growth in the innovation centres,
incubators, start-up spaces and the community groups globally engaged towards embracing
core sustainable values in architecture, processes and policies. In the economic context, there
is a growing interest among the governments as well which is characterised by the provision
of the incentives, business and community support programs, eco labels and communication
and others. In the social context, these practices are implemented to achieve the increase in
the resource productivity, reduction of the waste, reduction of wastage and reliance on critical
raw materials, and thereby leading to securing competitiveness in the community and
practices as a whole. The issues such as the social justice, equality and empowerment, social
inclusion, resilience, wellbeing, and living within the boundaries of the supportive
ecosystems are focussed.
Some of the real life examples of the positive urban intervention practices are elaborated as
follows. The first recent example of a real life civic incubator namely the Sidewalk Labs is
that of Google which is set up with an aim to solving the urban problems by means of
technology. One of the first project of the incubator is that of Scaling up and spreading
LinkNYC which is aimed at turning the old pay phones into public wi-fi spots having the free
phone calls, Wi-Fi and USB Charging, to enable people finding a nearest bus or restaurant
(Peters). Thus, the urban problems such that of energy consumption, cost of living, urban
equity and others can be addressed by the use of the technology. The incubator is the
representative of a modern and comprehensive model of civic engagement, connectivity, and
the municipal services in the region. Thus, as evident from the above, the sustainable
technology based incubator is aimed at solving community problems at once. The project like
above would not only inculcate citizens of the region to inculcate into energy saving
practices, but also would lead to shrinkage in time and cost.
The European Union has been engaged in implementing a number of policy interventions to
facilitate resource efficiency in the industries and communities. For instance, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formulated a national strategy which is known
as the Towards a Resource Efficient Ireland (Rafferty).” Some of the key interventions under