This challenge exercise is designed to encourage you to think through how the politics of climate change is playing out locally, and to develop creative, practical approaches to making changes in everyday practices in your community (or another one you select). The object of the challenge is to outline and make the case for a project to improve sustainability for as city or town you know, drawing on examples from projects undertaken in other cities. On the one hand, the Challenge is an exercise in creativity. It asks you to reimagine how your community or city can take one step toward greater sustainability. On the other hand, it asks you to think in as practical a terms as possible about how to make the case for real change, and how to make that change a reality.

For the Challenge, you can select any town or city. You are encouraged to select a locality you know relatively well from personal experience, but it need not be any particular type of place, or even be located in the US. In the exercise, you will be asked to make and advocate a proposal as an expert consultant or a concerned citizen for ONE innovation that will contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from that city, and with it to environmental sustainability more generally. The proposal could be small in scale, such as introducing bike lanes, pedestrian zones or electric vehicle charging stations in a particular neighborhood you know. Or it could be large, such as adopting a plan for the local public power company serving the city to shift to carbon free local electric power by 2050. It could take the form of a public policy, but also of a technological innovation in the private sector, or a change led by a major local private institution (such as USC, or a leading local company). Either way, the proposal should address the realities of the city’s current situation, and analyze the practical steps necessary to accomplish what you propose.