Dear Reader,

Welcome to the second issue of the Michigan Journal of Sustainability. The idea for this journal originated among a group of doctoral fellows at the University of Michigan. Their vision was to create an intellectual forum on sustainability that would facilitate communication and translation of research, policy, and theory across disciplines. In preparing this second issue, our editorial board has transitioned from the founding members to a new cohort of sustainability fellows. As such, this issue marks a milestone for us because it represents continuity in our efforts, and a growing repository of information that we hope our readership will find reliable and actionable.

Ecosystems are most vibrant when there is a diversity of organisms that interact with one other, each with an important role to play in creating a sustainable environment. In the same way, we believe that a community of scholars is most vibrant and effective when we have and appreciate diversity in expertise, and engage closely with one another to further the evolution of meaningful thought and action. As an editorial board, we have learned that being open to each other’s experiences and disciplines has allowed us to achieve a common goal and to enhance our impact.

Our articles share a similar theme of how collaboration among actors from all parts of a community is essential to identifying needs and discovering solutions that address three key pillars of sustainability—social, economic, and environmental. This collaboration is fundamental to helping communities develop tools and solutions that will help them face their own unique sets of sustainability challenges. We also recognize that in order to solve many of the world’s toughest environmental problems, we must meld our ideas in ways that create new, hybrid concepts and initiatives that live in shared academic, policymaking, and programmatic spaces.

This issue could not have happened without the support of many individuals and organizations. We thank our authors and reviewers for their considerable efforts in transforming the articles in this issue so they are relevant both to experts and to a broad audience of academics, practitioners, and policymakers. We greatly appreciate the contributions of our copy-editor, Julie Steiff, who made the extra effort to ensure that not only the format, but also the messages, of our articles are clear and understandable. We thank Mike Shriberg, Don Scavia, David Mudie, and Andrew Horning at the Graham Institute for their financial and organizational support, without which we could not provide an online forum for open-access, peer-reviewed sustainability research. Finally, we thank Rebecca Welzenbach, Jason Colman and Kelly Witchen at Michigan Publishing for typesetting and creating a beautiful layout for our articles

We hope that you enjoy the articles in this issue and that they inspire you to consider how past work, current endeavors, and future collaborations can be combined to transform the future of sustainability in communities across all scales, from local to global. We also hope that the ideas presented will germinate in the minds of our readership, and potentially spark new projects and approaches to protecting and restoring our environment.

The Editorial Board

Susan Cheng, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, co-Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Mandell, School of Public Health, co-Editor-in-Chief

Nicholas B. Rajkovich, Urban and Regional Planning, co-Editor-in-Chief

Sarah Mills, Urban & Regional Planning

Missy Stults, Urban & Regional Planning

Patrick Harlin, School of Music

Lingli He, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Thomas Jenkinson, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Lauren Stadler, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Michelle Reicher Newstadt, School of Education

Brian Vickers, Psychology