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About Us |
Don't Think Rust, Act Green
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Rust 2 Green Binghamton is an emerging network of Cornell educators, students, and researchers working together with a wide range of community partners to identify and design innovative strategies and solutions addressing the unique problems and needs of Binghamton. Our goal is to work alongside the community, by engaging in creative problem solving, imagination, and collective invention that will transform problems into opportunities and obstacles into assets.
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our Guiding Practices and Principles |
Community Based researchCommunity based participatory action research refers to a partnership approach, where community members, stakeholders, and researchers are all involved with developing and achieving research goals. Here, researchers and community members write on community chalkboards to express their opinions of the river and provide inspiration for future projects.
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PlacePlaces are dynamic, processual and complex totalities, comprised of relational networks and flows interweaving inhabitants, over time, with the environments they shape and that in turn shapes them.
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Placemaking Placemaking is the process of people collectively reimagining and reinventing public spaces in a way that revitalizes the community. Placemaking asks professionals and non-professionals to learn together, and exchange knowledge in the process of addressing a community's needs and challenges. Here, performers re-enact Shakespeare for the public on the river at Confluence park.
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LivabilityLivable cities are affordable, socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, healthy, economically vital, regenerative places that foster democratic citizenship and citizenry.
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Sustainable DesignSustainable Design integrates human and natural systems (like the rivers), developing new methods for constructing infrastructure and processes that promote a better quality of life for current and future generations. Examples include making buildings more energy efficient and flood resistant, like the University Downtown Center, which was strategically built to minimize damage in the event of another flood.
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Green InfrastructureGreen Infrastructure consists of conscientiously planned networks of functioning landscapes that preserve natural systems. Examples include: open spaces, wildlife corridors, porous surfaces and cleansing water systems. An example of this is the porous pavement at the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator in Binghamton.
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Urban resilienceUrban Resilience is a city's ability to withstand and adapt to change, under the understanding that they are susceptible to variances and disruptions. An example of this is the ability of Binghamton to withstand another flood.
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ecological design intelligenceEcological Design Intelligence includes sensitivity to the many scales, micro and macro, of ecological systems and the way they interact with one another. This type of design minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes.
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service learning Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. In Binghamton, VINES Urban Farm is a great example of this. Rust2Green has been involved with service learning projects over the years, especially in Utica where interns have worked on the development of community gardens and the reshaping of public spaces.
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