Class Reflection October 30

During the first half of this class, Carmine Militano revealed his secrets for success. He shared that getting ahead and staying on top in the business world requires sound decision making, a knowledge of first principles, and an acceptance of the new era of sustainability. In my view, his outline of a structured decision making processes, as a way of making defensible decisions, was especially useful. However, while I appreciate Miltano's expertise and success in his field, I found his delivery to be overly aggressive. His dog eat dog attitude, and in particular his implication that academia and many of the concepts it studies are often irrelevant in the real world of business, was shortsighted. In order for us to become truly sustainable, we require a multi-disciplinary approach. This approach should involve knowledge and action sharing between Universities, the business community, government, and beyond. If this mutually shared approach is to be successful, each discipline must demonstrate a high level of respect for the value of the others.

While Mr. Militano was no doubt knowledgeable and confident in his delivery, I found the discussion of the second speaker, Dr. van Vliet to be more engaging. His presentation of case studies throughout Europe demonstrated projects which were multifaceted, and which looked to the future of sustainable design. I feel that these projects were largely successful because they were grassroots in nature, from the early planning stages of development. I was impressed to learn the projects had gone beyond sustainability, instead they continue to improve over time. Dockside Green was presented as a North American adaption of these multi-use, grassroots, environmentally conscious projects. The success of Dockside Green has yet to be determined, and while Dr. van Vliet questions the financial motivations of the project, only time will tell whether Victoria will be able to adapt these European models to Canada.