Building a city powered by the community

The Townsville City Council Citysolar Program is driving a vision for a tropical sustainable city and it is doing so through action. As an integral part of the Townsville Queensland Solar City Project, Citysolar is synergising innovative and collaborative ways to building a smart, sustainable and resilient city for the future.

Citysolar works at a whole-of-community level in Townsville where the success of the program has been largely due to involving all industries, businesses, schools and residents. It works at local scale sustainability projects integrating across all systems (including energy, water, waste, transportation, health and finance) which creates a framework for anyone and everyone to be a part of in ways that matter to them, shifting from local-scale sustainability to a transformative system that is replicable and transferable to other cities in Australia and the world.

This cutting-edge program delivers a new framework for thinking and action that is designed to transform the way people think about and use energy.

Citysolar is building a city powered by the community through:

• Utilising all of our collective knowledge and actions;
• Creating new inter-relating systems by integrating environment, economics and social dimensions;
• Shifting the way people think and act about energy through continuous inquiry, involvement and repeated actions in the direction we want to change.

 

Program Objectives

• To communicate about sustainability in ways that are meaningful to the community so that they are willing to foster sustainable change and adopt clean technology;
• To involve the community in sustainability initiatives and programs so that they come along on the journey of sustainable discovery and have buy in;
• To build the community's capacity to think and act for themselves, so that they take responsibility for their own futures and take action action in the direction of a sustainable community.

 

Citysolar Design System for Change: A whole-of-community collaborative framework for action

In search of new ways of thinking and action around energy use, Citysolar provides a framework for action where residents, businesses, schools, government and non-governmnetal organisations (NGOs) can act into and create their own preferred sustainable energy efficient and resilient future that affordable, practical, implementable, socially acceptable and most of all meaningful to them.                                                                                 

The program works by uncovering the hidden world of energy (the hidden costs and underlying processes behind the challenges) and providing pathways (a framework for action) for the community to act for themselves in the direction of their preferred future (e.g. affordability). 

This is implemented through a whole-of community Design System for Change approach, which is a framework for action delivered using the following proven methodologies: Collective Social Learning (CSL) Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) Thematic Communication Experiential Learning Systems Thinking and Network Approaches Program Deliverables Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) Education and Awareness Promotion Centre for Excellence in Tropical Design (CETD) Solar Technology Incentives Economic Policy and Instruments Monitoring and Evaluation

Citysolar Highlights

• IBM Smarter Cities Challenge
• Townsville Residential Energy Demand Project
• Cool Roofs Townsville Program 
• Castle Hill Solar Cooling Station
• Strand Electric Vehicle Charging Station
• Smart Lifestyle Expo
• Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)
• Earth Hour
• Sensor Network Projects
• Solar Learnscapes

   

 For more information please contact Integrated Sustainability Services by emailing sustainable@townsville.qld.gov.au.