Changing my Community

I am looking for book recommendations on books that could be put to use to change how a community lives more sustainably. Ideally the books would teach me how to analyze the community I live in and determine what changes would make the greatest difference - and how to implement them.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

thank you!

The hard part about this is getting consensus and just deciding to do it.

There's a list of about 5 books I'd recommend:

I'd first recommending getting a group of like-minded people together, to come up with
community-developed solutions. This is part of the "think globally, act locally" mantra.

Anything determined by a top-down analysis is going to be viewed with suspicion by the people who you are suggesting changes to. Studies have shown that people are often more influenced by behavior of their neighbors than by laws or imposed regulations.

Economics of sustainability - small is beautiful or the version with ISBN 0-88179-169-3
I found a copy of a 1999 edition which had extra commentary by other authors.

I also recommend ecotopia by Callenbach, a work of speculative fiction about a possible future where Northern California, Oregon, and Washington State secede from the rest of the US and create an ecological utopia.

Look at other sustainability models, including the cohousing movement, called reinventing community more compact development that improves the sense of community in a group of houses. But first see if there are other cohousing groups in your area, as this will save time.

Bill Moyer (the activist, not the journalist Bill Moyers) wrote a book called Doing Democracy about a process for invigorating social movements.

For works about situations and scenarios to avoid, I recommend Our Stolen Future (nonfiction) as well as the movie Soylent Green, fiction based on a population out of
control that stresses all the planet's systems. Soylent Green's scenarios about 21st century life have been depressingly accurate so far, predicting global warming, depleted fish stocks, massive corruption, large rich/poor gaps (compared to 1970), and clueless rich people deciding to play video games and waste resources on a large scale. Only the population prediction of 22 million people in New York City was incorrect.) The actress Leigh-Taylor Young, one of the main characters in that film, was involved with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) later on.

The United Nations (UNESCO) has works and professional development resources on an entire sustainability curriculum for school students. http://www.unesco.org/en/esd/ is where some of the material can be found. (If anyone has the UNESCO CD-ROM, please let me know)

I have a book from Hugh Barton : Sustainable Communities: The Potential for Eco-neighbourhoods. It is quite focused on architecture and planning. Peak-Oil wise, you might check out The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience (Transition Guides) by Rob Hopkins. I don't know the last one here but it looks like a good book on community gardens: Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle's Urban Community Gardens (Landscape Architecture Foundation's Case Studies Series)

The film Fresh: New Thinking About What We're Eating has a segment that showcases an urban farm in Milwaukee. Great stuff.

I'm working on moving to a small community which has been serious about sustainability for a long time now. They have a grassroots organization which, I'm sure, has counterparts in many other places. Their mission statement is:
"The mission of Sustainable Berea is to assist in the development of a sustainable community. Sustainable Berea is a group of residents of Berea, Kentucky and surrounding areas who work together to develop stronger households, neighborhoods and community in the face of imminent threats to global sustainability including peak oil, global climate change, sky-rocketing national debt, rapid population growth, and the destruction of ecosystems worldwide."

They've been promoting Edible Yards and Rain Catchment ongoing. This year they are conducting a test to gather data about 10 varieties of heirloom potatoes and how they fare in the local microclimate.

The power company owned by the town is building a solar farm. The college has an Eco-Village in which students produce their own foods and conserve resources, learning a whole new way.

That's just a sample of what's going on there.

In looking through the Sustainable Berea website, I discovered a resource linked to The Transition Handbook - http://transitionus.org/

I've not read The Transition Handbook myself, but from others' descriptions it's pretty close to what you're looking for. My favorite book that I *have* read on the subject is The Long Descent.

Agreed. The Long Descent and anything else on the subject by John Michael Greer is a must read. His writings frequently challenge and inspire me. His blog is also required reading for anyone interested in rebuilding communities for the future.

If your community is ethnically and linguistically diverse, there are some inclusive titles out there. Here's a copy of an edit I just added to the Sustainability Zeitgeist thread of one such title:

The Mexican Kitchen Garden is a small book published by Andrews McMeel; it is from their "Ethnic Kitchen Garden Series" of titles. It's a 111-page hardcover work from 1998. Subject headings are:

Vegetable gardening -- United States
Vegetables -- United States
Vegetables -- Mexico
Mexican American cookery
Herb gardening

Specific vegetables are discussed, and how to grow them. Recipes, how to dry and store the herbs, seed and plant sources, and further readings are also included. The veggies are beans, cactus, chayote, corn, cucumber, garlic, jicama, onions, peppers, squashes and pumpkins, tomatoes and husk tomatoes.

See the Sustainability Group "Zeitgeist" thread for more titles that are culturally inclusive.

Lists of inclusive titles for younger age groups are also available in some of our other Sustainability Group threads. Adolescents, particularly, are worth reaching out to because in the North American culture they have often been the most excluded human group.

Evet, see also the thread titled Sustainable Community Building. I have added new titles there and also in the Zeitgeist that describe how to make the transition.

Some of those titles are forthcoming, but they will all be in print by June 2014.

Sustainable Community Building:
http://www.librarythingcom/topic/143579

Evet, I just added a group of books to the sustainability group's "Zeitgeist" thread, one of which is on your topic:

Fostering sustainable behavior: an introduction to community-based social marketing

Edit: August 10, 2013:
And here is one that I just listed in the new thread about academic titles related to sustainability:

The Good food revolution: growing healthy food, people, and communities. Published in 2012.