BUILDING YOUR
SUSTAINABLE SQUARE MILE ™
Blacks in Green’s signature Sustainable Square Mile is the gold standard for Black community development. Our unique whole-system approach for whole-system problems is designed to increase our communities’ wealth and wellbeing in the context of a changing climate.
The Sustainable Square Mile concept embodies BIG’s 8 Principles of Green Village Building, from neighbor-owned green enterprises to locally produced clean energy. Building on the “Grannynomics” values of the proud, hard-working Great Migration families who started businesses, bought homes, and kept dollars circulating in this neighborhood, we are growing specific economic sectors within our West Woodlawn pilot project.
BIG is also planning community-based economies centered on housing and waste management, and is already offering training for jobs in clean energy and agriculture.
WEST WOODLAWN PILOT PROJECT — CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
ENERGY
We are developing an affordable community microgrid powered by clean energy. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions and unhealthy air pollution, create jobs, and boost community resilience to rate hikes and blackouts.
HORTICULTURE
Our Garden-Oriented Development program, aka GOD, consists of the BIG Botanic Gardens and Farms social enterprise and The West Woodlawn Village Farm, Botanic Garden & Arboretum.
TOURISM
BIG is renovating Emmett Till’s childhood home to serve as a net-zero museum, theater, and heritage tourism hub that tells the story of the Great Migration as seen through the eyes of the Till-Mobley family. Visitors can even stay in BIG’s nearby guest house.
HOUSING
In collaboration with experts in the field, BIG is designing affordable, high-performance housing concepts to foster the conservation lifestyle: a cluster of households growing their own food, generating their own energy, recycling their waste, and producing income along the way.
WASTE MANAGEMENT
We are composting waste and using it to build soil and grow food, as a demonstration. We are teaching these best practices to residents so they can incorporate them into their own homes.
The 8 Principles of Green Village Building
BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE URBAN VILLAGE
Each Sustainable Square Mile puts BIG’s 8 Principles of Green Village Building into practice.
HOMESTEAD
Affordable Green Homes & Gardens
Each village is sustained through jobs-driven development without displacement, providing low- and moderate-income housing, and producing high-quality food through land trust CDC’s.
PRODUCTS
Shopping & Waste
Each village supplies basic goods and services to neighbors, converting waste to wealth in the process.
ENERGY
Local Energy Production & Transportation
Each village produces and stores its own energy for heat, light, and transportation, and owns its means of production.
WEALTH
Micro-Saving/Lending, Local Currency
Each village has its own measures, exchanges, and repositories of wealth.
ORGANIZATION
Village Centers & Borders
Each village is a walkable, self-sustaining whole with perceptible borders, inter-dependent local ties, global context, organized for self-interest.
CULTURE
News & Networks, Stories & Structures
Each village celebrates its past, present, and future culture through stories in print, digital, and theatrical forms.
ECONOMY
Green Jobs & Enterprise
Each village circulates its wealth through neighbor-owned businesses which invent, invest, manufacture, and merchandise locally.
EDUCATION
Health, Education & Welfare
Each village fosters life-long learning through hubs, which are epicenters for green training, development, and lifestyle transformation.
WHAT IS “GRANNYNOMICS”?
Inspired by Naomi’s grandmother,
Adelia Thompson Siggers
BIG founder Naomi Davis has identified 12 values-based propositions that have historically been important in African American family life, and that enable recreating walkable urban villages today.
“In my life, values were derived from the economic soul of my own grandmother’s home and business management,” Naomi says. “She was Adelia Thompson Siggers of Minter City, Mississippi, a sharecropper’s wife. By understanding her operating system—the one in which my mother, and I, in turn, were raised—I’ve been able to begin distinguishing whole-system solutions which once operated sustainably in our urban villages.”
12 Propositions of Grannynomics
EVERYONE MUST WORK
Even the lilies of the field must draw water and harvest sun.
EARN RESPECT
Trade in the Golden Rule.
CONTINUE TO IMPROVE
Whether raising hogs or competing in a spelling bee, be your best.
ALL YOUNGSTERS MUST LEARN A TRADE
By age 10, every child is an apprentice.
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH FLOWERS
Chicken poop makes great fertilizer.
EAT WELL AND REST
Take care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. Enjoy featherbeds and whole grains.
BE COURTEOUS, HONEST AND PROUD
You can be certain your Creator and others are watching.
CLOTHE, FEED, EDUCATE AND RESTRAIN YOUR CHILDREN AND YOURSELF
Adopt others’ children if they can’t.
PAY AS YOU GO
Use the catalog to dream big. Spend small, and appreciate your possessions.
CASH IS OFTEN OPTIONAL
Grow your own food. Make your own clothes.
KEEP YOURSELF AND YOUR THINGS BEAUTIFUL AND NEAT
Even your laundry on the line should shine.
DEFINE & REGULATE YOURSELF
Your spouse’s boss’s wife cannot tell you what to do.