David Orr is the founder and visionary behind the Oberlin Project.

Borrowing from oberlinproject.org:

A grant-funded venture, the Oberlin Project has four full-time staff who coordinate stakeholder teams working on energy, education, policy, community engagement, economic development, transportation, research, and local foods and agriculture. Stakeholder teams include representatives from partner organizations (City, College, educational institutions, foundations, economic development entities), local and regional experts, and members of the Oberlin community.

It was of course part of the goal, of course, to talk about how the Oberlin Project came to be. We also talked about his youth in western Pennsylvania and the way the town in which he grew up did and didn’t serve its own needs in the mid-20th century; the politics of his coming on board at Oberlin College; climate change … each of those could have been an hour (or more) on their own.

After a year of doing this podcast, trying to put a finger on what Oberlin is, some patterns start to emerge. There are technical and economic reasons why the Oberlin Project would work well here, but at the street level, Mindy Brueggeman and Lester Allen both described Oberlin as a community unto itself; that is, in a bigger city, neighborhood communities would be defined by something like we have here.

And that people-level phenomenon SHOULD be capable of fostering conversation to include everyone in how this works and/or evolves.

Beyond the Oberlin Project, lies the Lake Erie Crescent.

There is a wrinkle coming to these podcasts in the future. More when that happens. In the meantime, thanks to all 251 of you who follow this on Facebook, 130 of you on Twitter and the rest wherever you are.
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