Sustainable cities or eco-cities—designed with consideration of minimal environmental impact— have been attempted and are being planned around the world. Robert Best, a senior at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, will soon travel to these communities in Asia, Africa and Europe as a Watson Fellow to seek a better understanding of why some eco-cities thrive and others fail.

The $25,000 fellowship will allow Rob Best '10, an engineering major from West Hills, Calif., to spend a year studying the social, economic, cultural and political factors which contribute to the success or failure of sustainability efforts in China, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and the United Kingdom.

“As nations seek methods of reducing their environmental impact in accordance with international treaties, eco-cities are being planned as models for expanded urban sustainability,” he says. “By studying these utopias, I hope to draw broader conclusions about the role of cultural and social interactions on sustainability initiatives.”

He is one of 40 students nationwide to receive the fellowship, which the Thomas J. Watson Foundation awards to college seniors of unusual promise for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States. Nearly 1,000 students from up to 40 selective private liberal arts colleges and universities apply for these awards each year.

Best says he applied for the fellowship because he is convinced that successful eco-cities represent a healthy alternative for humanity. “Sustainability, whether you believe in global warming or not, is the future of our society,” he says. “It just makes sense. It is a way of making our machines more efficient, our cities less polluted, and our resources last longer for future generations.”

“However,” he adds, “with all of the hype given to sustainability, too often it seems that cultures just draw solutions from others out of context without giving too much thought to how it will adapt to their socioeconomic conditions.” He says he hopes to identify the most important and influential factors that often contribute to successful eco-city projects.

Many nations are planning these eco-cities as idealized, highly sustainable communities to serve as models of what we should strive for in our society. “Some are just starting and others have already failed,” says Best. “What I want to look at is what some of the predictors might be for success or failure of these cities and find out what factors play the most important role in achieving sustainability within cultures.”

Best has taken full advantage of his years at HMC, participating in a myriad of activities. In January 2009, along with engineering majors Annika Eberle ’09 and Autumn Petros-Good ’09, Best spent 16 days in Kenya, Africa, on an educational mission to share a solar water purification method at the Clay International Secondary School. He is past president of the joint service club Engineers for a Sustainable World and Mudders Organizing for Sustainability Solutions (ESW/MOSS), which received a Student Leadership Award from the Jenzabar Foundation in November 2008 for the Kenya project, for a sustainable agriculture project in Guinea and for its commitment to increasing awareness of environmental issues on the HMC campus. Best is currently a member of a Global Clinic team advised by Lisette de Pillis, professor of mathematics and Global Clinic director, and Patrick Little, engineering professor and Engineering Clinic director. Best, two other HMC students and two faculty members met with the president of Iceland last July while in that country working on a project related to renewable energy. They participated in the summer school program of the Renewable Energy School based in Akureyri, Iceland.

“My engineering courses [at Harvey Mudd College] taught me the importance of optimization in design and production which are a major part of sustainability,” he says. “In addition, my humanities courses really taught me that sustainability is interdisciplinary, drawing on lessons from political science, economics, history and other fields.”