Environmental Sustainability and Urban Interventions Essay

This essay examines the relationship between urban interventions, civic incubators, and environmentally supportive behavior change. It highlights the growing trend of integrating sustainable practices into urban environments, including cities, towns, and office spaces, driven by globalization and the need for sustainable practices. The essay discusses various initiatives, such as Google's Sidewalk Labs, which uses technology to address urban problems like energy consumption and cost of living, and the European Union's policy interventions for resource efficiency. It emphasizes the role of community-based social marketing in creating awareness and promoting behavior changes related to material consumption, energy, and water resources. The essay concludes that urban interventions and civic incubators are crucial steps towards responsible resource utilization and behavioral shifts among individuals and organizations, either through voluntary actions or government mandates. The essay references scholarly articles and reports to support its arguments.

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

the strategy are the “Green Business” and “Green Enterprise.” The two programs were
marketed by the government to create awareness among the business organisations. In the
words of (Kennedy) community based social marketing is an effective means of creating
awareness about the environmental practices. The main aim of the said intervention is to
achieve the reduction of material consumption, energy and the water resources, thereby
leading to an overall change in the household, business and the community behaviours. The
program is aimed at improving the behaviour of the businesses by encouraging them to opt
eco-innovation, environmental management, social innovation and skills development and an
overall improved environmental performance. Because of the strategy the positive impact can
be seen in the form of increasing number of companies employing the circular economy
approaches or the “life cycle thinking” which integrates the management systems with the
environmental strategies.
Hence, from the discussions conducted in the previous parts, it can be stated that the urban
interventions and civic incubators are not only a feasible step towards the judicial resource
utilization in the region, but also leads to a change in the behaviour of the individuals and the
organisations. The said change initiative is either voluntarily or through the government
requirements.

Bibliography
Kennedy, Amanda L. "Using Community-Based Social Marketing Techniques To Enhance
Environmental Regulation". Sustainability, vol 2, no. 4, 2010, pp. 1138-1160. MDPI AG,
doi:10.3390/su2041138. Accessed 22 June 2019.
Rafferty, Simon O'. "Designing Interventions For Sustainable Behaviour Change In Business
And Communities". Epa.Ie, 2019,
http://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/research/econ/Research_Report_245.pdf. Accessed 22 June
2019.
Peters, Adele. "Google's Urban Innovation Incubator Just Made Its 1St Investment, To Bring
Public Wi-Fi To Cities - 100 Resilient Cities". 100 Resilient Cities, 2019,
https://www.100resilientcities.org/googles-urban-innovation-incubator-just-made-its-1st-
investment-to-bring-public-wi-fi-to-cities/. Accessed 22 June 2019.