About the Florida House Institute 

for Sustainable Development

Our Mission:

To facilitate change for a sustainable future by partnering with others to create a practice of sustainable community development and a learning network of organizations and communities similarly engaged.  In addition to practice in our home community, the Institute provides consulting, facilitation and implementation support for neighborhoods, local governments, private developers, and community organizations and initiatives involved in sustainable community development.

Our Message:

It's your future by design or default.
You can have a future you like, rather than the one you?re likely to get.

Our Definition of Sustainable Development:

Sustainable development is a process of continuous improvement by design of natural, built, economic and social systems.  This means:

        Nurturing variety and productivity in natural systems;

        Increasing efficiency, using renewable resources and eliminating waste in built systems;

       Using social and environmental goals to create market opportunities in economic systems;

        Helping citizens understand whole systems and act on that knowledge in social systems.

Our Work:

We help citizens, entrepreneurs and communities:

        Facilitate visioning and planning processes at different scales: regional, county, town and development project;

        Research what works for sustainable development;

        Educate themselves about whole systems and sustainability principles and practices;

        Demonstrate what works in the unique context of their community to build markets for sustainable development; and

        Implement businesses ventures and changes in regulatory, market and financial incentives to support sustainable behaviors.

Our Systems Approach:

A comprehensive approach to community sustainability requires understanding the key systems in your community, how they connect to each other, and how to identify the most effective opportunities for change. The Florida House Institute has developed a systems approach to sustainable community development that helps citizens and practitioners be strategic about where and when they choose to act.  This method uses a taxonomy of four system layers to understand the challenges and opportunities facing our communities.

Social systems.
These are the formal and informal systems that govern our human relationships and support our physical, psychological and spiritual development.  They include our processes for governance and decision-making, knowledge generation, education, health care, culture and spiritual renewal.  They are our social infrastructure through which we associate with others, develop values, assess wellbeing, plan for the future and take action on our plans.

Economic systems. 
These are the systems we use to create wealth, provide services and add value to raw materials.  These include firms, markets, economies, capital and currencies, labor markets, knowledge generation and technological innovation.

Built systems. 
This is our built environment, including buildings (residential, commercial and civic) and infrastructure (water, waste, energy, transportation, and communications).  These structures and systems provide space for us to live and work, and facilitate the flows of energy, material, information and people between those spaces.

Natural systems. 
These are the systems that are the basis of our physical existence.  They include geology, soils, hydrology, water sheds, animal and plant populations and  habitats, the air, weather systems, and solar patterns.

A sustainable community development strategy needs to work deliberately in all these systems, and reinforce the flows of energy, material and information that connect them.

Services:

Consulting: 

        Planning, at different levels of scale from the project to the region.

        Sustainable development

       Green building

       Water resource planning

Education: 

        Seminars and workshops on sustainable development and affordable, livable communities. 

      Florida Public Officials Design Institute (in partnership with the FAU Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions).

Facilitation

       Visioning

        Discovery and design charrettes

        Building community capacity.

        Developing community centers for environmental learning and civic engagement.

        Developing tools for community design and decision making.