Citizens Make the Vision for their Communities

Nice video about people getting active to help their communities. The first section about Make the Road shares the stories of a few individuals working together to make sure that their neighbors have a better, more positive life in the neighborhood where they live. The video is sponsored by Bank of America as part of their Citizen Active series - getting citizens involved in their communities to work for positive change.

Earth Hour brings 100 countries together

Earth Hour is coming up in a few weeks - this year it's on March 27th at 8:30 PM wherever you are. The citizens from 100 participating countries voluntarily turn off their lights for 60-minutes in the world's largest collective event as a symbol that we are ready for action on climate change. The video below explains the event - pretty impressive to see the lights go out around the world, especially the spotlights on the sphinx and pyramids in Egypt.

Armed with Art, Teens Confront Violence

Photo from Peace in Focus flickr site

Peace in Focus works with youth to teach leadership skills and to express their visions of peace and non-violence via photography. Or in their words "Grassroots Peace Photojournalism." The organization works with youth artists in Boston, Birundi, and Liberia to teach photography as a vehicle to share their experiences and perspectives with the rest of the world.

An exhibit of the photos is up at the Harriet Tubman house in Boston & they held the opening event last night, complete with performances, beautiful photographs, and a wonderful community of individuals to support the teens. I was really impressed by the program's ability to train young photographers - it was clear from the quality & composition of the photographs that the programming covers technique, storytelling, and leadership responsiblity. The teens at the event were energetic, passionate, articulate and inspirational, and it was so refreshing to see positive work happening at the local & international level. Great event!

Urbanites "Go Native," Grow Community

Interesting threads on the interwebs:

The Helpsters are Coming! Er, maybe. Interesting if cynical article about hipsters-turn helpsters getting involved in their communities. Shout out to seed bombs noted. Can someone please find them a better name? Article via Huffington Post "Impact"


FEAST - recurring community dinner in Bklyn to fund democratically selected community art projects. Nice.

Seed Bombs (A How-To)
photo by Gina Ferazzi, LA Times

Worldchanging says Move it or Lose It!

Allex Steffen, editor of Worldchanging.org writes about how it's time to bust a move on changing the U.S.'s dark energy lifestyle. His point is that we can't just keep the same U.S. lifestyle, switch out a few parts, and carry on our way, but that we need to reinvent our lives and our sense of culture in a thoughtful and speedy manner. He also points out that suburbia is bad news bears for climate change emissions, that the way you live, and where you live matters!

Along the same lines, check out the article and sweet graph about how the good life includes lots of walking, strolling, running, biking, people watching, etc. (it's easier to see if you click on the article link right down there vv)

A Message from Copenhagen: Climate Plan Must Include Walkable Urbanism

Image: Jonathan Rose Companies via Richard Layman.

Transit As A Catalyst For Community | Living Climate Change

Transit As A Catalyst For Community | Living Climate Change

Power of Music to Inspire

Some great inspiration in honor of this week's World Aids Day

One at a Time
music video by Travis McCoy

Growing food in cities: Permaculture

There are many types of urban agriculture -- from a downtown farmer's market selling produce grown (close-ish) outside the city, community vegetable gardens, organic, not organic, commercial hydroponics, home gardens to sell, to give away, or eat produce, container gardening, rooftop gardens, green roofs, etc.

Is urban agriculture a good thing? I say yes, but not all urban ag is created equal. On the downside would be design students who think you can grow hydroponic blueberries in thirty-story farm skyscrapers. It’s not as simple as ordering a blueberry bush and having it appear. If you've ever tried to grow blueberries (which grow on a woody bush) you'd understand that plants can be temperamental about where they want to grow, what conditions they need, and whether your efforts will quite literally bear fruit. So while I’m excited about pushing the limits of traditional agriculture, my excitement is tempered by realism: plants are experts at growing, provided that they’re in the right environment. Towards that end, urban ag should be looking for ways to let plants do what they do naturally: grow.

“Traditional” industrial agriculture takes advantage of economies of scale to produce large areas of food at a very low cost per unit. It also uses a great deal of fossil fuel energy, pesticides, and fertilizers which create costs to the environment that eventually catch up with us and someone (taxpayers) ends up paying for later (for example, paying to clean up a polluted stream, getting sick from contaminated shellfish because of high coliform counts, erosion of roads from poor soil practices, climate change, etc). Smaller gardens, often seen in cities where space is a premium, have really high yields per area of space, but require more human involvement in the form of time. You can't just plant a blueberry bush on your porch and come back three months later expecting a blueberry harvest. Urban ag requires more attention per plant than industrial ag plants get, but the benefit is high yield in low space and low embedded energy (tractor fuel, transport, etc). Read: Ch 2 of Bill McKibben's Deep Economy for more facts and figures about this.

Enter permaculture, a multi-crop production process that mimics natural ecosystems to produce high yield food. The idea is that the system of agriculture works better as a living system, and not as an assembly line, and this system should be a long-term investment (“perma” = permanent) in the productivity and quality of the land and soil. Permaculture methods have brought plants to the desert and improved soil quality in agricultural lands around the world (see CNN video below), but can permaculture work for urban environments, which are not really, well, natural at all? If you’re planning to grow things in the ground, such as in a community garden or abandoned lot, urban permaculture could have some great benefits, but for city dwellers like me with container gardens, other methods seem to be more practical, so I’m curious to learn more.

READ:

Redesign the city: a look at urban permaculture by Liz Neves is a solid, recent article. If you read more articles, you'll find that much of what's available online is based off of the guys who started this in the 70's, and it could use an image update to get some mainstream traction in this century.

WATCH:

The CNN International video does a pretty good job of making it seem cool:


In a more thorough discussion, I would include the applicability of (biochar + urban ag + permaculture) = better small-scale, high-yield food production.

From Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson in NYT on March 6, 2009:

"Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.

But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution."

Climate Week NYC

This Week:
Dozens of events about climate change
[Sept 20 - 26]



The Climate Group is partnering with some serious heavy hitters to bring the world's attention to addressing climate change.

There are piles of presentations, discussions, films, and events happening all over the city.

Some interesting events open to the public:

Monday 9.21: Jobs Justice Climate
New York Society for Ethical Culture
Starting at 6:00 pm, free, info and tickets here.

Tuesday & Wednesday 9.22-9.23: Urban Green Expo
Wednesday 9.23: Responding to Climate Change
Mercy Corps Action Center
7:00 pm Panel discussion

Thursday 9.24: Solar in the Developing World
6:00 pm Panel Discussion

Friday 9.25: Brita Climate Ride
Kickoff Event
9.26 - 9.30 Ride from NYC - DC
Go!

Green Your Block: National Day of Service

September 11, 2009
United We Serve, National Day of Service


Create an event in your neighborhood
or
Find an Event Near You

Green for All & the Hip Hop Caucus have joined up for a national service day to bring our communities & residents into the clean energy economy. The coalition behind this includes all the movers and shakers of the climate action movement. This nation-wide day of action focuses on 4 project areas:

• Education and awareness
• Legislative advocacy
• Youth activism
• Private-sector development

photo from greentheblock.net

Dancing for the Climate: Powershift Australia

Using dance to engage the public & get fun, positive attention for climate change. The video takes a little while to get going, but it's a great action. Powershift is a youth conference to create leadership around clean energy and green jobs. I attended the US version in March '09 held in DC.

Urban Gardening: New York

Hhere's a look at some urban gardening that's going on around the US.


NYT featured a nice article about rooftop gardens with fun photos. --->
Image via Andrew Wilson, NYT





New York Sun Works has an impressive cadre of worker bees bringing fresh food to the rooftops, office buildings, and yes rivers of New York. In 2007 they launched a carbon-neutral river barge/greenhouse that grows veggies and hosts visitors to learn about hydroponic horticulture and alternative fuels. Sun Works also has interests in a myriad of projects related to vertical greenhouses & sustainable engineering. Their technology focuses on hydroponics, a growing method I'm not crazy about when it comes to "big picture" food production. On the other hand, the diversification of methods, and the experimentation is hugely important -- and it looks like they're working in a thorough and thoughtful manner. They have a cool lookin' brochure here.

Although, if we're counting looks, I'd say that this Uros community did a better job on Lake Titicaca, and they didn't even need solar panels...

Nominate Someone! Boston Youth Leadership Award

Boston seeks to nominate youth leaders for multi-cultural award. Read below for quoted text:

“We Are Boston”
Youth Leadership Awards:

"Do you know a New Bostonian resident or an individual, under 21 years old, whose parents are immigrants, who deserves a special recognition? The Office of New Bostonians is looking for a young person who has the perseverance, courage and idealism of a New Bostonian. The nominee must have made significant contributions to empower his/her community, demonstrated cultural pride or promoted cross-cultural understanding/collaboration and be an inspiration to his or her peers."

Nomination Form Here
Nomination Deadline: June 30 (extended)

Why is this important? This is an incentive from the City of Boston to encourage youth from diverse family backgrounds to take an active role in re-imagining and creating the community of their hopes and dreams. It asserts that Boston's success is tied to the active participation of all residents, and that youth from different cultural backgrounds have something special to bring to the table when it comes to community engagement. It creates a positive reward for the recipient, but more importantly, it sends a message to the recipient's peers about what their larger community/city expects and rewards. This is a direct request from the City that respects and recognizes the individual's unique identity and background as a desired component of community development.

Send your nominations!

Election in Iran

This is a video of an election protest in Iran from June 17, after the June 13 election. Most of the US media images of the election have shown rioting and shouting, but this one is silent. It's amazing to see such an enormous group of humanity standing silently for something bigger than themselves. You can see the progression of protests in a collection of first-person videos. I am humbled by the passion and perseverance.

Bogota: Paths for Sustainability

PBS did a series in 2007 called E2 Design (I don't have TV, so my mom just sent me the link almost two years later...) about design solutions for sustainability. One of their shows was about Bogota and the things that a developing, cash-strapped, recently violent city is doing to be a model for sustainability. This story also reminds us of the power of education: The city's mayor took the sustainability discussion he learned from the U.S. and combined it with values from his community.

You can watch the video online.

Urban Gardening: Chicago

Small Steps: Walkable Times Square

See:
photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times

Read: Times Square Closes To Traffic (NYT Article)

Learn: NYCDOT's Strategic Transportation Plan

Liveable Streets Contest Winners

image from www.good.is

GOOD's contest to get re-visioned plans for liveable streets has announced the winners. Great visual explanations that are easy to understand. Click the picture to go to their site.

Get Rich Quick: Hip Hop Gasping

My heart tells me, that this is not what graf was supposed to become:

image from Carmichael Gallery on Flickr
Uhhhh. An "urban art" show titled "Get Rich Quick"? Gross. Come on artists, what about something more "hip hop" themed like "Get Rich or Starve Tryin." Or does 50 Cent have copyright on that? What's killing me is that I really used to like you guys. You all were my last little hope that winning at life doesn't mean materialism, but you get a show in a beautiful gallery and this is what they name it? Swoon -- when you pieced those boats together with your friends, was it really to have your name joined with Shepard Fairey? Ick. Your work is BEAUTIFUL! And I thought those projects meant something about having a community. KAWS, maybe you could get a collaboration going with Damien Hirst. When you were cooking wheatpaste in your kitchen, was it really with dreams of a big house in the suburbs with expensive leather sofas? And Banksy, come on! What about all of that the social commentary? Was that really all about making money? Really?

YES! artists should get paid for their work. I've seen my mom lugging supplies and plywood enough to know that you have to have your heart and soul and body in it to stay in the game. But the title of the show is just repulsive considering what street art used to be at its inception, and what I thought it was all about. I thought it was about adding beauty, commentary, and creativity to public spaces that everyone else had thrown away. I thought it was about engaging with the community and grabbing people out of their haze and back into their environment. There's also a solo show at the same time by Brazilian artist Thais Beltrame coincidentally entitled "When all the stars are gone." Interesting.

What's making me bite my tounge a little is that this gallery shows gobs and gobs of ridiculously talented visual artists. So my qualm is not with the gallery, it's with the "artists" who are going to add a show called "Get Rich Quick" to their credentials. Bleh.

Maybe I just don't understand the deeper artistic meaning that the title is trying to bring to contemporary art. Maybe I'm not appreciating the irony (which, itself would be ironically ironic??). Or maybe, this what the Splasher (remember him/her?) was trying to make a statement about -- if you're going to let street art be synonymous with materialism, instead of opposed to it, all you're posting around the neighborhood are unpaid advertisements for materialism, not public art.

Hometown Represent! Braddock Grows Green

The first-term mayor of Braddock, PA is showing where the rubber meets the, uh, bike path.

See a video clip here.

Photo by Lake Fong, Pittsburgh Post Gazette

What I like about this present-day story is that the work really gives voice and thought to a community identity, something that has been absent from community development since Robert Moses (ick) told us what city living was supposed to look like. What we're seeing is the real and concrete development of a new mode of urban living, and the energy around Braddock has realized the theories of new urbanism into:

• An urban garden that sells produce to the community
• Low-cost housing for artists
• Local engagement in the arts
• Community events and community engagement for residents, providing a sense of place for people of all ages and backgrounds
• Reclamation of existing architecture (instead of those weird suburban condo things)
• Dense, mixed-use development
• A loud call for green job development & clean energy businesses to set up shop

What I encourage for long-term success is that the mayor, John Fetterman, bring other leaders and "figure heads," especially youth from the community, along with him so that he's not the only one talking, and so there are several long-term faces associated with the neighborhood who are allowed to go out and be strong and be vocal to take the message to the streets. I mean, bike paths. This makes the community stronger and avoids the fiefdom complex that so often pervades Pittsburgh neighborhood politics. I would also encourage a thorough long-term plan of how to empower the current residents to take advantage of the economic change that will come to their community when housing prices begin to rise.

If we're going to make cities livable, that has to mean for everyone, and this model brings together a lot of the ideas. There are a lot of people rooting for these models to work. And of course it's nice to see it happening in my hometown.