Wrapping up Week 1

Congratulations on completing Week 1!

This first milestone is an occasion to celebrate what you accomplished and learnt this week.

In Week 1, we have outlined the high level conversation that SiD (and this very course) aim at contributing to.

• Sustainability is one of the most important concepts to understand and act upon, if we are to thrive in the coming century.

• The struggle to find common ground on what sustainability is partly originates from the lack of a common understanding and vocabulary. On the one hand, past definitions greatly contributed in setting a common North Star for a global community of practice. On the other, they did not quite nail down the actual meaning of such an important word.

• Treating and talking about sustainability as the physical property of objects leads us to lose sight of the system such object is embedded in. As a consequence, the benefits of object-oriented solutioning approaches are, at best, only temporary. At worst, these ‘solutions’ are narrow-minded, and shift the burden to different places, or to different time frames. In this sense, we advocate for a system-oriented understanding of sustainability.

• With SiD, we felt that we needed to fill the definition gap first. In Week 2, we will dive into how the framework defines sustainability, and how this impacts our collective understanding.

Before going forward to the next week, take a moment to share a piece of feedback with us, to help us providing you with the best learning experience we can.

How did you enjoy this week? What do you think we can improve? Let us know in the comments section