How can businesses, governments, and civil society organizations work together to build environmentally sustainable economies and livable local communities in an increasingly crowded and globalized world? This interdisciplinary course looks to human ecology, environmental and ecological economics, community economic development, and related fields for answers to this question. Students use the theoretical insights of these fields to identify assumptions about human nature and nurture that lead to environmentally unsustainable economic and development practices, and apply them to the practical problems of building robust national economies and healthy local communities through public-private partnerships and other means.