Global Urban Sustainability Solutions Exchange (GUSSE)

What is GUSSE?

The Global Urban Sustainable Solutions Exchange (GUSSE, www.gusse.org) is an online place where the world will collectively discuss, review and apply the best ideas for sustainable cities. It’s like an Amazon.com for urban solutions: you can browse, get recommendations, share and pick up ideas. GUSSE’s purpose is to serve the needs of urban professionals.

Taking advantage of breakthroughs in technology and interactive learning, GUSSE also fosters an interactive, deeply democratic, global dialogue that will harness the wisdom within cities and get better at putting ideas into action. For the first time ever, being wired all over the world makes such a global, bottom-up approach possible. Your input will help us all figure out how to put emerging social technologies to best use in achieving that goal: making sure that GUSSE is user-friendly, responsive, exciting and -- most importantly, useful.

GUSSE’s respected international partners will work together to curate the thousands of existing online sources of sustainability information.  Then, following the success of leading Internet sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon, MyPlace and Flickr, GUSSE’s open discussion will allow global users to add value -- creating collective sense by reducing complexity and building actionable consensus.

GUSSE at the World Urban Forum in Vancouver

GUSSE’s world debut in demonstration prototype form at the World Urban Forum (WUF III) in Vancouver in June 2006 is designed to test and refine functionality with international user groups, and to identify partners and champions for final development and implementation phases.  GUSSE will be fully operational in late 2007. This current site is only a preliminary demonstration of GUSSE’s full potential.  For example, our full implementation will include support for multiple languages, regional cultures and local concerns.

GUSSE is a uniquely Canadian contribution to global sustainability.  The original Habitat conference in 1976 focused Canadian research and innovation on the challenges of urban environments.  GUSSE is the latest innovation to come from Canada, offered in a most open and action-oriented manner for the benefit of all of Earth’s cities.

Networking Event on 23 June

Your voice counts. Join us on 23 June. We’re calling on urban practitioners (from NGOs to researchers, city planners to engineers, businesses to designers) to join us in this session and take GUSSE to the next level. The networking event will start with a panel discussion. This will be followed by facilitated small group discussions where you will get a chance to take a look at the pilot site, test it out and provide concrete suggestions for change. This will be an important part in creating the next, working version of GUSSE.

Title: GUSSE: A Global Urban Solutions Exchange
Date: Friday 23 June
Time: 8:30 - 10:00 am
Place: Room MR12 in the Vancouver Convention Centre

More details at http://www.wuf3-fum3.ca/networking_events/ profile_events.asp?ID=45.

What can GUSSE do for Urban Practitioners?

Imagine you’re a city manager in Kigali, Kowloon or Kamloops faced with a water quality crisis or waste policy issue. How can you quickly scope the latest ideas and proven solutions?  Consultants are expensive. Google isn’t the answer.  Academic databases are impenetrable.  The sustainability noise is deafening -- where can you find a signal?

Now imagine an Amazon-like online destination where the ‘products’ are sustainability solutions and the conversations of countless consumers, like you, continuously identify the best solutions -- all of which are free!

Urban professionals using GUSSE will be part of a global community of city-builders who, simply by searching for solutions for themselves and sharing what they know about what works and what doesn’t, will collaboratively identify the best ideas and resources for everyone.  They will make collective sense of thousands of sources of sustainability information and create spaces that speak to their specific needs, from water shortages to transport problems in Nairobi. GUSSE facilitates interactive learning and dialogue among practitioners on action for urban sustainability. Individuals can talk about their particular urban context and borrow, localize and create sustainability resources and solutions in city or issue spaces online. There is a wealth of urban case studies, feasibility studies, and other technical knowledge. GUSSE makes sure the important lessons are not lost -- that the successes and failures are vetted in a public arena hungry for solutions, rather than hard to find in a database or on an obscure site somewhere.

The world has never had an opportunity to share and build the sustainability knowledge already within our cities.  GUSSE is an innovative online website that brings together the most current, valuable and trusted solutions for urban sustainability, then refines and applies them within a ‘social networking’ framework that harnesses collective wisdom on a global scale.

Partners and Contact Information

GUSSE was conceived at the University of British Columbia and is being groomed by a multi-sector team of experts under the guidance of a distinguished Advisory Board.  Consultations surrounding the World Urban Forum in Vancouver will determine a charter governance body and set of development partners.  For more information please contact either of:

David Vogt
Director, Digital Learning Projects, The University of British Columbia
E-mail: david.vogt@ubc.ca

Elisa Campbell
Director, Design Centre for Sustainability, The University of British Columbia
E-mail: elisa.campbell@ubc.ca

Media interests may contact:

Brad Foster
External Affairs, The University of British Columbia
E-mail: brad.foster@ubc.ca

Dozens of experts provided energy and inspiration to the realization of GUSSE.  In particular, we wish to acknowledge Brad Foster in the UBC President’s Office for institutional championship, Steven Forth of Opn Design for information architectures, Jason Mogus of Communicopia.Net for marketing strategies, Nola-Kate Seymoar of ICSC for Habitat JAM integration, Charles Kelly of WUF for enthusiastic networking, and Kim DeVooght of IBM for mapping out global development.

This initial phase of GUSSE development has been realized through the generous financial support of Western Economic Diversification and UBC’s University Town Project.   Additional support has been provided by Opn Design, Communicopia.Net, the International Centre for Sustainable Cities (ICSC), and IBM.