Sustainability: Sustaining Cities and Community Cultural Development

Art educators, offering curricular possibilities to engage children, youth, and adults with the environment, have been among the participants in this conversation. The literature of the field has included thoughtful and provocative examples of theoretical and practical approaches that promote art education and environmental concerns. The most recent significant single source contributing to this conversation was a special issue of Studies in Art Education edited by Senior Editor Candace Stout (2007). In their guest editorial, Hicks and King (2007) challenged the field to respond to the "environmental crisis" by contributing to "a more environmentally responsible and ecologically literate culture" (p. 332). In their editorial, they foreshadowed this current special issue by acknowledging that, "learning to live in nature in a sustainable way is a cultural challenge" (p. 332)."Sustainability" and "sustainable development" have been often used interchangeably in academic and public discourse about the environment (Blandy, 2011). Blandy (2009) argued that, within the literature of art education, sustainability has not been fully theorized and/or applied. Our purpose in this article is to demonstrate that sustainability, as a contested concept, and despite its obvious limitations, is one approach worthy of serious consideration. We also argue that sustainability is useful curricularly and pedagogically for the purpose of assisting students in understanding the importance of systemic responses to environment concerns. We cite the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) at the University of Oregon (UO) in support. We conclude by acknowledging that "sustainability" should be one approach of many used by art educators within a larger cross-disciplinary and cross-sector curricular initiative and commitment responding to the environmental crisis.Sustainability as a Contested Concept in Theory and PracticeDjalali and Vollaard (2008) identified 41 "movements" through which people attempt to negotiate and strategize their relations with their environment. Among the numerous, and often conflicting movements cited are anarco-primitivism, bioregionalism, ecofeminism, global warming denialism, permaculture, transpersonal ecology, and sustainable developmentalism. According to Djalali and Vollaard, those who believe "that it is possible to amend the negative environmental sideeffects of capitalistic economic development, satisfying present needs without compromising the needs of future generations, advance sustainable developmentalism"(p. 40). Despite their own definition, they stated that, "theoretically, no one can take a stand against Sustainability because there is no definition of it" (p. 33). While we do agree that there is no consensus on a definition of sustainability and/or sustainable development across fields and public sectors, we later argue that this is a strength rather that a weakness. We believe Djalali and Vollaard have been helpful in demonstrating that the concept is not new, tracing its history to the 18th-century German "Nachhaltigkeit," having to do with sustaining forests. Parallel to the historiography of Djalali and Vollaard has been the work of Titon (2011) in developing a notion of "sustainable music" from an eth no musico logica I and folkloristic perspective by considering the multiple ideological strains behind the concept of sustainability. In doing so, he provides a rigorous and critical tour through the complex relationships between culture, ecology, nature, environment, and sustainability.Within the context of current efforts to respond to environmental degradation, consensus in the literature attributes the emergence of the concept of sustainability to the United Nations (2011) document, Our Common Future, "Towards Sustainable Development" (1987). In chapter two of this document, sustainable development is defined asDevelopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. …