desertSMART

desertSMART is a concept in the making. We’re setting a stage, arranging the tables, and inviting people to join together in reflection, imagining, and action to create a healthier community. Because we are situated here, in this astonishing arid land, and because there is a history of intelligent living in this place, our first aim is to simply inspire conversational comfort with the phrase "desert smart". As creatures of language and symbol, there is a powerful truth in understanding that ‘we are what we speak’. We want people to come and go from here with the words "desert smart" echoing in their memories and rebounding into natural speech. Alice is a clever place in a tough, beautiful landscape.

Why call this a Roadmap? Given Alice Springs’ remoteness most of us have done our time on the road, so the roadtrip idea seemed like it could be useful. The idea of a shared journey, a navigational challenge, and procedural ambiguity all seem to resonate nicely with the metaphors that a roadmap conjures.

Drivers, navigators, and passengers

No surprises here: some people have to get behind the wheel and pump those pedals, while others are more intent on watching the landscape for signs of photo opportunities. In this exercise, mutual respect developed among the group as people with all sorts of temperaments learned that, in whatever mode, we are all on the same road together.

Key milestones

Getting into the vehicle together is really the first step. We’ve pointed ourselves in a general direction: sustainability. Sustainability is perhaps best understood as simply improving our quality of life without diminishing our future. Now, how do we get there, what’s in our way, and where is the next fuel stop? The 2005 Roadmap makes a start.

What’s Next

This Roadmap document is being sent first to all the people who helped make it happen, ie, the people of Alice Springs who brought their talents from government, business, and community and chose to sit together and talk as peers…as people who live together with this land.

Next, we are sending copies of the Roadmap to the key decision-makers and policy developers in government and business. Our message is simple. Here is what the people of Alice Springs are talking about in 2005: desertSMART.

- John Brisbin, desertSMART founder