875 resultados para libraries, Regional Resource and Study Center, RSRC, Namibia, evaluation, ICTD, ICT4D, M
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This paper presents an overview of technical solutions for regional area precise GNSS positioning services such as in Queensland. The research focuses on the technical and business issues that currently constrain GPS-based local area Real Time Kinematic (RTK) precise positioning services so as to operate in future across larger regional areas, and therefore support services in agriculture, mining, utilities, surveying, construction, and others. The paper first outlines an overall technical framework that has been proposed to transition the current RTK services to future larger scale coverage. The framework enables mixed use of different reference GNSS receiver types, dual- or triple-frequency, single or multiple systems, to provide RTK correction services to users equipped with any type of GNSS receivers. Next, data processing algorithms appropriate for triple-frequency GNSS signals are reviewed and some key performance benefits of using triple carrier signals for reliable RTK positioning over long distances are demonstrated. A server-based RTK software platform is being developed to allow for user positioning computations at server nodes instead of on the user's device. An optimal deployment scheme for reference stations across a larger-scale network has been suggested, given restrictions such as inter-station distances, candidates for reference locations, and operational modes. For instance, inter-station distances between triple-frequency receivers can be extended to 150km, which doubles the distance between dual-frequency receivers in the existing RTK network designs.
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This paper investigates the Cooroy Mill community precinct (Sunshine Coast, Queensland), as a case study, seeking to understand the way local dynamics interplay and work with the community strengths to build a governance model of best fit. As we move to an age of ubiquitous computing and creative economies, the definition of public place and its governance take on new dimensions, which – while often utilizing models of the past – will need to acknowledge and change to the direction of the future. This paper considers a newly developed community precinct that has been built on three key principles: to foster creative expression with new media, to establish a knowledge economy in a regional area, and to subscribe to principles of community engagement. The study involved qualitative interviews with key stakeholders and a review of common practice models of governance along a spectrum from community control to state control. The paper concludes with a call for governance structures that are locally situated and tailored, inclusive, engaging, dynamic and flexible in order to build community capacity, encourage creativity, and build knowledge economies within emerging digital media cityscapes.
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Sustainable development has long been promoted as the best answer to the world’s environmental problems. This term has generated mass appeal as it implies that both the development of the built environment and its associated resource consumption can be achieved without jeopardising the natural environment. In the urban context, sustainability issues have been reflected in the promotion of sustainable urban development, which emphasises the sensible exploitation of scarce natural resources for urbanisation in a manner that allows future generations to repeat the process. This chapter highlights attempts to promote sustainable urban development through an integration of three important considerations: planning, development and the ecosystem. It highlights the fact that spatial planning processes were traditionally driven by economic and social objectives, and rarely involved promoting the sustainability agenda to achieve a sustainable urban future. As a result, rapid urbanisation has created a variety of pressures on the ecosystem upon which we rely. It is believed that the integration of the urban planning and development processes within the limitations of the ecosystem, monitored by a sustainability assessment mechanism, would offer a better approach to maintaining sustainable resource use without compromising urban development.
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Bronfenbrenner.s Bioecological Model, expressed as the developmental equation, D f PPCT, is the theoretical framework for two studies that bring together diverse strands of psychology to study the work-life interface of working adults. Occupational and organizational psychology is focused on the demands and resources of work and family, without emphasising the individual in detail. Health and personality psychology examine the individual but without emphasis on the individual.s work and family roles. The current research used Bronfenbrenner.s theoretical framework to combine individual differences, work and family to understand how these factors influence the working adult.s psychological functioning. Competent development has been defined as high well-being (measured as life satisfaction and psychological well-being) and high work engagement (as work vigour, work dedication and absorption in work) and as the absence of mental illness (as depression, anxiety and stress) and the absence of burnout (as emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy). Study 1 and 2 were linked, with Study 1 as a cross-sectional survey and Study 2, a prospective panel study that followed on from the data used in Study1. Participants were recruited from a university and from a large public hospital to take part in a 3-wave, online study where they completed identical surveys at 3-4 month intervals (N = 470 at Time 1 and N = 198 at Time 3). In Study 1, hierarchical multiple regressions were used to assess the effects of individual differences (Block 1, e.g. dispositional optimism, coping self-efficacy, perceived control of time, humour), work and family variables (Block 2, e.g. affective commitment, skill discretion, work hours, children, marital status, family demands) and the work-life interface (Block 3, e.g. direction and quality of spillover between roles, work-life balance) on the outcomes. There were a mosaic of predictors of the outcomes with a group of seven that were the most frequent significant predictors and which represented the individual (dispositional optimism and coping self-efficacy), the workplace (skill discretion, affective commitment and job autonomy) and the work-life interface (negative work-to-family spillover and negative family-to-work spillover). Interestingly, gender and working hours were not important predictors. The effects of job social support, generally and for work-life issues, perceived control of time and egalitarian gender roles on the outcomes were mediated by negative work-to-family spillover, particularly for emotional exhaustion. Further, the effect of negative spillover on depression, anxiety and work engagement was moderated by the individual.s personal and workplace resources. Study 2 modelled the longitudinal relationships between the group of the seven most frequent predictors and the outcomes. Using a set of non-nested models, the relative influences of concurrent functioning, stability and change over time were assessed. The modelling began with models at Time 1, which formed the basis for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to establish the underlying relationships between the variables and calculate the composite variables for the longitudinal models. The CFAs were well fitting with few modifications to ensure good fit. However, using burnout and work engagement together required additional analyses to resolve poor fit, with one factor (representing a continuum from burnout to work engagement) being the only acceptable solution. Five different longitudinal models were investigated as the Well-Being, Mental Distress, Well-Being-Mental Health, Work Engagement and Integrated models using differing combinations of the outcomes. The best fitting model for each was a reciprocal model that was trimmed of trivial paths. The strongest paths were the synchronous correlations and the paths within variables over time. The reciprocal paths were more variable with weak to mild effects. There was evidence of gain and loss spirals between the variables over time, with a slight net gain in resources that may provide the mechanism for the accumulation of psychological advantage over a lifetime. The longitudinal models also showed that there are leverage points at which personal, psychological and managerial interventions can be targeted to bolster the individual and provide supportive workplace conditions that also minimise negative spillover. Bronfenbrenner.s developmental equation has been a useful framework for the current research, showing the importance of the person as central to the individual.s experience of the work-life interface. By taking control of their own life, the individual can craft a life path that is most suited to their own needs. Competent developmental outcomes were most likely where the person was optimistic and had high self-efficacy, worked in a job that they were attached to and which allowed them to use their talents and without too much negative spillover between their work and family domains. In this way, individuals had greater well-being, better mental health and greater work engagement at any one time and across time.
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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce a knowledge-based urban development assessment framework, which has been constructed in order to evaluate and assist in the (re)formulation of local and regional policy frameworks and applications necessary in knowledge city transformations. Design/methodology/approach - The research reported in this paper follows a methodological approach that includes a thorough review of the literature, development of an assessment framework in order to inform policy-making by accurately evaluating knowledge-based development levels of cities, and application of this framework in a comparative study - Boston, Vancouver, Melbourne and Manchester. Originality/value - The paper, with its assessment framework, demonstrates an innovative way of examining the knowledge-based development capacity of cities by scrutinising their economic, socio-cultural, enviro-urban and institutional development mechanisms and capabilities. Practical implications - The paper introduces a framework developed to assess the knowledge-based development levels of cities; presents some of the generic indicators used to evaluate knowledge-based development performance of cities; demonstrates how a city can benchmark its development level against that of other cities, and; provides insights for achieving a more sustainable and knowledge-based development.
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Purpose: To examine the impact of different endotracheal tube (ETT) suction techniques on regional end-expiratory lung volume (EELV) and tidal volume (VT) in an animal model of surfactant-deficient lung injury. Methods: Six 2-week old piglets were intubated (4.0 mm ETT), muscle-relaxed and ventilated, and lung injury was induced with repeated saline lavage. In each animal, open suction (OS) and two methods of closed suction (CS) were performed in random order using both 5 and 8 French gauge (FG) catheters. The pre-suction volume state of the lung was standardised on the inflation limb of the pressure-volume relationship. Regional EELV and VT expressed as a proportion of the impedance change at vital capacity (%ZVCroi) within the anterior and posterior halves of the chest were measured during and for 60 s after suction using electrical impedance tomography. Results: During suction, 5 FG CS resulted in preservation of EELV in the anterior (nondependent) and posterior(dependent) lung compared to the other permutations, but these only reached significance in the anterior regions (p\0.001 repeated-measures ANOVA). VT within the anterior, but not posterior lung was significantly greater during 5FG CS compared to 8 FG CS; the mean difference was 15.1 [95% CI 5.1, 25.1]%ZVCroi. Neither catheter size nor suction technique influenced post-suction regional EELV or VT compared to pre-suction values (repeated-measures ANOVA). Conclusions: ETT suction causes transient loss of EELV and VT throughout the lung. Catheter size exerts a greater influence than suction method, with CS only protecting against derecruitment when a small catheter is used, especially in the non-dependent lung.
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Background and Purpose Although plantar fascial thickening is a sonographic criterion for the diagnosis of plantar fasciitis, the effect of local loading and structural factors on fascial morphology are unknown. The purposes of this study were to compare sonographic measures of fascial thickness and radiographic measures of arch shape and regional loading of the foot during gait in individuals with and without unilateral plantar fasciitis and to investigate potential relationships between these loading and structural factors and the morphology of the plantar fascia in individuals with and without heel pain. Subjects The participants were 10 subjects with unilateral plantar fasciitis and 10 matched asymptomatic controls. Methods Heel pain on weight bearing was measured by a visual analog scale. Fascial thickness and static arch angle were determined from bilateral sagittal sonograms and weight-bearing lateral foot roentgenograms. Regional plantar loading was estimated from a pressure plate. Results On average, the plantar fascia of the symptomatic limb was thicker than the plantar fascia of the asymptomatic limb (6.1±1.4 mm versus 4.2±0.5 mm), which, in turn, was thicker than the fascia of the matched control limbs (3.4±0.5 mm and 3.5±0.6 mm). Pain was correlated with fascial thickness, arch angle, and midfoot loading in the symptomatic foot. Fascial thickness, in turn, was positively correlated with arch angle in symptomatic and asymptomatic feet and with peak regional loading of the midfoot in the symptomatic limb. Discussion and Conclusion The findings indicate that fascial thickness and pain in plantar fasciitis are associated with the regional loading and static shape of the arch.
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Human facial expression is a complex process characterized of dynamic, subtle and regional emotional features. State-of-the-art approaches on facial expression recognition (FER) have not fully utilized this kind of features to improve the recognition performance. This paper proposes an approach to overcome this limitation using patch-based ‘salient’ Gabor features. A set of 3D patches are extracted to represent the subtle and regional features, and then inputted into patch matching operations for capturing the dynamic features. Experimental results show a significant performance improvement of the proposed approach due to the use of the dynamic features. Performance comparison with pervious work also confirms that the proposed approach achieves the highest CRR reported to date on the JAFFE database and a top-level performance on the Cohn-Kanade (CK) database.
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This article examines social, cultural and technological change in the systems and economies of educational information management. Since the Sumerians first collected, organized and supervised administrative and religious records some six millennia ago, libraries have been key physical depositories and cultural signifiers in the production and mediation of social capital and power through education. To date, the textual, archival and discursive practices perpetuating libraries have remained exempt from inquiry. My aim here is to remedy this hiatus by making the library itself the terrain and object of critical analysis and investigation. The paper argues that in the three dominant communications eras—namely, oral, print and digital cultures—society’s centres of knowledge and learning have resided in the ceremony, the library and the cybrary respectively. In a broad-brush historical grid, each of these key educational institutions—the ceremony in oral culture, the library in print culture and the cybrary in digital culture—are mapped against social, cultural and technological orders pertaining to their era. Following a description of these shifts in society’s collective cultural memory, the paper then examines the question of what the development of global information systems and economies mean for schools and libraries of today, and for teachers and learners as knowledge consumers and producers?
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This paper examines some of the central global ethical and governance challenges of climate change and carbon emis-sions reduction in relation to globalization, the “global financial crisis” (GFC), and unsustainable conceptions of the “good life”, and argues in favour of the development of a global carbon “integrity system”. It is argued that a funda-mental driver of our climate problems is the incipient spread of an unsustainable Western version of the “good life”, where resource-intensive, high-carbon western lifestyles, although frequently criticized as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying, appear to have established an unearned ethical legitimacy. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, the paper argues that it is also important that economic incentives support and stimulate that search: the sustainable versions of the good life provide an ethical pull, whilst the incentives provide an economic push. Yet, if we are going to secure sustainable low carbon lifestyles, it is argued, we need more than the ethical pull and the economic push. Each needs to be institutionalized—built into the governance of global, regional, national, sub-regional, corporate and professional institutions. Where currently weakness in each exacerbates the weaknesses in others, it is argued that governance reform is required in all areas supporting sustainable, low carbon versions of the good life.
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Community engagement with time poor and seemingly apathetic citizens continues to challenge local governments. Capturing the attention of a digitally literate community who are technology and socially savvy adds a new quality to this challenge. Community engagement is resource and time intensive, yet local governments have to manage on continually tightened budgets. The benefits of assisting citizens in taking ownership in making their community and city a better place to live in collaboration with planners and local governments are well established. This study investigates a new collaborative form of civic participation and engagement for urban planning that employs in-place digital augmentation. It enhances people’s experience of physical spaces with digital technologies that are directly accessible within that space, in particular through interaction with mobile phones and public displays. The study developed and deployed a system called Discussions in Space (DIS) in conjunction with a major urban planning project in Brisbane. Planners used the system to ask local residents planning-related questions via a public screen, and passers-by sent responses via SMS or Twitter onto the screen for others to read and reflect, hence encouraging in-situ, real-time, civic discourse. The low barrier of entry proved to be successful in engaging a wide range of residents who are generally not heard due to their lack of time or interest. The system also reflected positively on the local government for reaching out in this way. Challenges and implications of the short-texted and ephemeral nature of this medium were evaluated in two focus groups with urban planners. The paper concludes with an analysis of the planners’ feedback evaluating the merits of the data generated by the system to better engage with Australia’s new digital locals.
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This thesis explores the proposition that growth and development in the screen and creative industries is not confined to the major capital cities. Lifestyle considerations, combined with advances in digital technology, convergence and greater access to broadband are altering requirements for geographic location, and creative workers are being drawn away from the big metropolises to certain regional areas. Regional screen industry enclaves are emerging outside of London, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, in Nova Scotia in Canada and in New Zealand. In the Australian context, the proposition is tested in an area regarded as a ‘special case’ in creative industry expansion: the Northern Rivers region of NSW. A key feature of the ‘specialness’ of this region is the large number of experienced, credited producers who live and operate their businesses within the region. The development of screen and creative industries in the Northern Rivers over the decade 2000 – 2010 has implications for regional regeneration and offers new insights into the rapidly changing screen industry landscape. This development also has implications for creative industry discourse, especially the dominance of the urban in creative industries thought. The research is pioneering in a number of ways. Building on the work conducted for my Masters thesis in 2000, a second study was conducted during the research phase, adapting creative industries theory and mapping methods, which have been largely city and nation-centric, and applying them to a regional context. The study adopted an action research approach as an industry development strategy for screen industries, while at the same time developing fine-grained ground up methods for collecting primary quantitative data on the size and scope of the creative industries. In accordance with the action research framework, the researcher also acted in the dual roles of industry activist and screen industry producer in the region. The central focus of the research has been both to document and contribute to the growth and development of screen and creative industries over the past decade in the Northern Rivers region. These interventions, along with policy developments at both a local and national level, and broader global shifts, have had the effect of repositioning the sector from a marginal one to a priority area considered integral to the future economic and cultural life of the region. The research includes a detailed mapping study undertaken in 2005 with comparisons to an earlier 2000 study and to ABS data for 2001 and 2006 to reveal growth trends. It also includes two case studies of projects that developed from idea to production and completion in the region during the decade in question. The studies reveal the drivers, impediments and policy implications for sustaining the development of screen industries in a regional area. A major finding of the research was the large and increasing number of experienced producers who operate within the region and the leadership role they play in driving the development of the emerging local industry. The two case studies demonstrate the impact of policy decisions on local screen industry producers and their enterprises. A brief overview of research in other regional areas is presented, including two international examples, and what they reveal about regional regeneration. Implications are drawn for creative industries discourse and regional development policy challenges for the future.
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Australia is currently in the midst of a major resources boom. Resultant growing demands for labour in regional and remote areas have accelerated the recruitment of non resident workers, mostly contractors, who work extended block rosters of 12-hour shifts and are accommodated in work camps, often adjacent to established mining towns. Serious social impacts of these practices, including violence and crime, have generally escaped industry, government and academic scrutiny. This paper highlights some of these impacts on affected regional communities and workers and argues that post-industrial mining regimes serve to mask and privatize these harms and risks, shifting them on to workers, families and communities.
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University libraries play an important role in contributing to student and faculty members’ academic achievement. This study examines perceptions of university library usage to consider factors that influence achievement of students, academics and administrators. A thorough review of relevant literature examined approaches to determining user satisfaction of students and faculty, and factors that influence library usage. It highlighted the value of usage on educational performance. It enabled development of a theoretical framework leading to the Factors of Academic Library Usage (FALU) model, which was developed to investigate the effect of usage factors. FALU was tested in Kuwait university libraries. The study used validated questionnaires from 792 students, 143 academics and 121 administrators to measure five library factors. Interviews were conducted across the three University libraries. The findings are useful in measuring the correlation between the current academic library usage and educational performance.
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Ecological sustainability has been proposed to address the problem of human impacts increasingly degrading planetary resources and ecosystems, threatening biodiversity, eco-services and human survival. Ecological sustainability is an imperative, with Australia having one of the highest eco-footprints per person worldwide. While significant progress has been made via implementation of ecologically sustainable design in urban communities, relatively little has been undertaken in small, disparate regional communities in Australia. Regional communities are disadvantaged by rural economic decline associated with structural change and inequities of resource transfer. The ecologically sustainable solution is holistic, so all settlements need to be globally wise, richly biodiverse yet locally specific. As a regional solution to this global problem, this research offers the practical means by which a small regional community can contribute. It focuses on the design and implementation of a community centre and the fostering of transformative community learning through an integrated ‘learning community’ awareness of ecologically sustainable best practice. Lessons learned are documented by the participant researcher who as a designer, facilitator, local resident and social narrator has been deeply connected with the Tweed-Caldera region over a period since 1980. The collective action of the local community of Chillingham has been diligently recorded over a decade of design and development. Over this period, several positive elements emerged in terms of improvements to the natural and built environment, greater social cohesion and co-operative learning along with a shift towards a greener local economy. Behavioural changes in the community were noted as residents strived to embrace ecological ideals and reduce fossil fuel dependency. They found attractive local solutions to sourcing of food and using local employment opportunities to up skill their residents via transformative learning as a community in transition. Finally, the catalytic impact of external partnering has also been documented. How well the region as a whole has achieved its ecologically sustainable objectives is measured in terms of the delivered success of private and public partnering with the community, the creation of a community centre cum environment education centre, the restoration of local heritage buildings, the repair of riparian forests and improved water conditions in local river systems, better roads and road safety, local skills and knowledge transfer, support of local food and local/regional growers markets to attract tourists via the integrated trails network. In aggregate, each and every element contributes to a measure of eco-positive development for the built environment, its social organisation and its economy that has guided the local community to find its own pathway to sustainability. Within the Tweed-Caldera bioregion in northern New South Wales, there has been a lack of strategic planning, ecologically sustainable knowledge and facilities in isolated communities that could support the development of a local sustained green economy, provide a hub for socio-cultural activities and ecology based education. The first challenge in this research was to model a whole systems approach to eco-positive development in Chillingham, NSW, a small community where Nature and humanity know no specific boundary. The net result was the creation of a community environment education centre featuring best-affordable ecological practice and regionally distinctive, educational building form from a disused heritage building (cow bale). This development, implemented over a decade, resonated with the later regional wide programs that were linked in the Caldera region by the common purpose of extending the reach of local and state government assistance to regional NSW in economic transition coupled with sustainability. The lessons learned from these linked projects reveal that subsequent programs have been significantly easier to initiate, manage, develop and deliver results. In particular, pursuing collaborative networks with all levels of government and external private partners has been economically effective. Each community’s uniqueness has been celebrated and through drawing out these distinctions, has highlighted local vision, strategic planning, sense of belonging and connection of people with place. This step has significantly reduced the level of friction between communities that comes from natural competition for the finite pool of funds. Following the pilot Tweed-Caldera study, several other NSW regional communities are now undertaking a Community Economic Transition Program based on the processes, trials and positive experiences witnessed in the Tweed-Caldera region where it has been demonstrated that regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan and implement effective long term strategies for sustainability, empowering communities to participate in eco-governance. This thesis includes the design and development of a framework for community created environment education centres to provide an equal access place for community to participate to meet their essential needs locally. An environment centre that facilitates community transition based on easily accessible environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. This research draws upon the literatures of ecologically sustainable development, environmental education and community development in the context of regional community transition towards ‘strong sustainability’. The research approach adapted is best described as a four stage collaborative action research cycle where the participant researcher (me) has a significant involvement in the process to foster local cultures of sustainability by empowering its citizens to act locally and in doing so, become more self reliant and socially resilient. This research also draws upon the many fine working exemplars, such as the resilience of the Cuban people, the transition town initiative in Totnes, U.K. and the models of Australian Community Gardens, such as CERES (Melbourne) and Northey Street (Brisbane). The objectives of this study are to research and evaluate exemplars of ecologically sustainable environment education centres, to facilitate the design and development of an environment education centre created by a small regional community as an ecologically sustainable learning environment; to facilitate a framework for community transition based on environmental education, skills and infrastructure necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. The research was undertaken as action research in the Tweed Caldera in Northern NSW. This involved the author as participant researcher, designer and volunteer in two interconnected initiatives: the Chillingham Community Centre development and the Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP). Both initiatives involved a series of design-led participatory community workshops that were externally facilitated with the support of government agency partnerships, steering committees and local volunteers. Together the Caldera research programs involved communities participating in developing their own strategic planning process and outcomes. The Chillingham Community Centre was developed as a sustainable community centre/hub using a participatory design process. The Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP) prioritised Caldera region projects: the Caldera farmer’s market; community gardens and community kitchens; community renewable energy systems and an integrated trails network. The significant findings were: the CETP projects were capable of moving towards an eco-positive design benchmark through transformative learning. Community transition to sustainability programs need to be underpinned by sustainability and environmental education based frameworks and practical on ground experience in local needs based projects through transformative learning. The actioned projects were successfully undertaken through community participation and teamwork. Ecological footprint surveys were undertaken to guide and assess the ongoing community transition process, however the paucity of responses needs to be revisited. The concept of ecologically sustainable development has been adopted internationally, however existing design and planning strategies do not assure future generations continued access to healthy natural life support systems. Sustainable design research has usually been urban focussed, with little attention paid to regional communities. This study seeks to redress this paucity through the design of ecologically sustainable (deep green) learning environments for small regional communities. Through a design-led process of environmental education, this study investigates how regional communities can be facilitated to model the principles of eco-positive development to support transition to local cultures of sustainability. This research shows how community transition processes and projects can incorporate sustainable community development as transformative learning through design. Regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan long term strategies for sustainability, empowering people to participate in eco-governance. A framework is developed for a community created environment education centre to provide an equal access place for the local community to participate in implementing ways to meet their essential needs locally. A community environment education centre that facilitates community transition based on holistic environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability.