The Citistates Group

Shutkin is also a founding Partner of the Innovation Network for Communities, a national organization launched in early 2007 to develop and spread scalable social innovations in areas such as economic development and urban sustainability. From December 2007 to July 2008, he served as the Interim Executive Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the world’s fastest growing network of sustainable businesses, and was President and CEO of the Orton Family Foundation from 2004 to 2006.

Earlier, Shutkin spent 12 years in the Boston/Cambridge area where he founded and led the acclaimed environmental justice center Alternatives for Community & Environment and later New Ecology, Inc., a pioneering green development research and consulting organization. From 1998-2004, he taught in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT as a Research Affiliate, and was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Boston College Law School from 1993-2004.

Shutkin is the author of two books, the award-winning The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, and A Republic of Trees, Field Notes on People, Place and the Planet. He has been a commentator for Vermont Public Radio and the web magazine TomPaine.com and is a contributing writer for Northern Woodlands magazine and a published poet. He has served on several federal and state policymaking committees and has advised governments, businesses and non-profits across the U.S. and abroad on environmental and sustainable development policy. David Brower described him as “an environmental visionary creating solutions to today’s problems with a passion that would make John Muir and Martin Luther King equally proud.”

Speech Topics

• Civic Innovation and Sustainable Communities — Sustainability is a buzzword with few rivals, a term, it’s been said, that’s launched a thousand conferences. Yet almost nobody knows what it looks like on the ground. How do people and institutions live out the principles and values of sustainability in their day-to-day activities? What do these practices entail and how can they be applied? Sustainable communities start with civic innovators: people who can see across and beyond traditional constituencies, categories, institutions, and practices, define new realities, and navigate the difficult pathways to get there. It’s all about who the people are.
• Place-making and Pollution Control — Environmental regulation is not, nor was it ever conceived to be, an instrument of place-making — whether for cities, suburbs or rural communities. Wilderness and parks perhaps, but not human settlements. Despite the primacy of ecology to place, of natural systems to the livability and overall quality of life of cities and towns, the U.S. environmental protection system has traditionally not been in the business of place-making, except in the case of endangered wildlife or vegetation, where habitat is deemed as significant as the animal or plant itself. Less clear is the importance of place when human communities are at issue, the principle domain of pollution control. What makes for the ideal human habitat, both built and unbuilt? How does our complex environmental protection system — designed mainly to control pollution from large, easily identifiable sources, one medium, one pollutant at a time — actually improve living conditions in cities and towns?
• The Greening of Community Development — Modern environmentalism was hatched at precisely the same time as the community development movement, in the late 1960s, and even shared a common funder, the Ford Foundation. Yet, until recently, never the twain had met. Thanks to new approaches in the fields of planning and design, environmentalists and community developers are beginning to talk the same language smart growth, brownfields, green buildings, eco-industrial parks — with all sorts of interesting effects. What does “green community development” mean and who are its pioneers? Is this a true convergence or simply a marriage of convenience? Can environmentalists really come to embrace development as a legitimate environmental strategy?
• The Frontiers of Environmental Law and Policy — Top down or bottom up? Command and control or localism? Environmental law and policy finds itself at crossroads in the early 21st century. Traditional approaches to environmental protection, designed around a strong centralized system of governance and targeted to individual pollutants in individual media — air, water, land — have proved successful when measured against the toxic catastrophes chronicled by prophets like Rachel Carson, but less so when looked at through the lens of more current analysis, where the untoward realities of habitat destruction, unfishable rivers and streams, climate change, and childhood asthma loom large. Have we made significant environmental progress in the last three decades or are we on slow downward path? Can new strategies that call for more civic engagement and a broader examination of the diverse causes of environmental problems get us on the right track toward a sustainable future?
• Thinking Like a Citizen — Today’s land use challenges often pit one public good against another: wetlands versus affordable housing; ridge tops versus wind turbines; farm fields versus big-box retail. Undergirding these challenges are many of the seminal issues of our time — national security, energy policy, housing supply, and access to jobs. Nevertheless, most of us aren’t equipped to know how to approach these difficult trade-offs, let alone decide them in an informed, equitable and collaborative way. What are some of the tools and processes available to citizens to help them think and act like citizens? What are some examples of this kind of social decision making?

Recent Speeches

• Advancing Sustainable Community Development, “Creating Sustainable Communities for the 21st Century: Asset-Based Community Development,” National League of Cities, Savannah, Ga. (Jan. 2005)
• Land Trusts and Leadership, Land Trust Alliance Rally 2004, Providence, R.I. (Oct. 2004)
• Builders and Savers, Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition, Grand Isle, Vermont (Oct. 2004)
• Sharing Knowledge, Sharing Power, Sustainable Communities Conference 2004, Burlington, Vermont (July 2004)
• Renewable Energy and Land Use: Toward a Sustainable Future, Creating a Sustainable Energy Future: A Duke University Leadership Forum, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences (March 2004)
• Environmentalism for the 21st Century, Hamilton Hall Lecture Series, Salem, Massachusetts (March 2004)
• The Skye Boat Song: Reflections on Art and Youth, New Canaan Country School Alumni Council Award Ceremony (Feb. 2004)
• Designing for Civic Environmentalism, Symposium on Civic Environmentalism and Urban Design, Center for Sustainable Development, University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture (Nov. 2003)
• Education, Community, Sustainability: The Role of the University in Promoting Sustainable Development, Education for Sustainable Development Conference, University of Massachusetts-Lowell (Oct. 2004)
• Environmental Law and Sustainable Communities in India: Lessons from the U.S. in Regulation and Governance, National Speaking Tour, Republic of India, U.S. and India State Departments (Sept.-Oct. 2003)
• Greater Northwest Regional Smart Growth Advocacy Retreat, 1000 Friends of Oregon/University of Puget Sound (July 2003)
• It Will Take All Your Breath: An Earth Day Message, Earth Day Week Lecture, Connecticut College (April 2003)
• Lessons Learned in Sustainable Community Development, State of Mississippi, Mississippi Development Authority (April 2003)
• From Pollution Control to Place-Making: The Role of Environmental Regulation in Creating Communities of Place (Presenter), Regulating Place: Standards and the Shaping of Urban America Fall Forum, MIT (Nov. 2002)

Last updated August 4, 2008