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Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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August 2009
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Welcome to the August 2009 edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
Preparations for the 7th International Ecocity Conference (Ecocity World Summit 2009, December 13-15, Istanbul Turkey) are beginning to ramp up. Our speaker line-up is solid, with an international roll call of some of the best ecocity practitioners out there plus up and coming talent, and with a focus on cosmopolitan Istanbul.
We intend to leverage Ecocity 2009 to send a message to the United Nations climate change conference that will be concurrently convening in Copenhagen. To date, the UN series has not seriously looked at the form and function of the built environment as an engine of both climate change and climate solutions. If we are successful, we will influence COP15 towards a deeper discussion of the underlying problems and solutions of the planet's environmental crisis.
We invite you to join us in Istanbul this December as we chart a course out of the age of oil into a new era -- a journey that will require our most sophisticated technological and critical thinking capabilities, plus a more-ancient-than-oil renewable resource base -- sun, wind, water and soil. The successful implementation of this transition will require the reshaping and restructuring of our largest creations: our cities, towns and villages. Therein lies our greatest risk and our greatest potential -- the most important challenge we've ever faced together as a species. This is not a problem that we can leave for our children to solve. Everything that comes afterward depends on what we do now.
To the future,
Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org
http://www.ecocity2009.com (early registration end August 31)
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The
Ecozoic Era refers to a vision, first promoted by cosmologist Thomas
Berry, of an emerging epoch when humanity lives in a mutually enriching
relationship with the larger community of life on Earth.
Will
we be able to make the transition in time to retain a biosphere healthy
enough to regenerate living systems now under extreme stress? Our role in exploring ecocities is to clarify a vision of cities that can. And then go out and build them. There is
no way to be certain we will succeed, but our position is that there's no time to just sit
around and wonder about it: now is time for action.
Thank
you for all that you are doing to help accelerate progress toward a
civilization in balance with living systems.
Maybe one day all cities
will be ecocities.
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Peak Oil, Bingecononics and the GDP as the Gigantic Depletion Problem
by Richard Register
Soleri and Register
photo by Susan Felter
We'd been enjoying the celebration for Paolo Soleri's 90th birthday at Arcosanti, Arizona, and our friend Marco was leaving. For a little last conversation I was bumping over the two-mile dirt road accompanying him to the corner gas station at Cordes Junction where he was soon to catch his bus. "Peak oil" came up.
"I don't believe in peak oil," said Marco, sagebrush whisking by, dust in the window. "A large energy company in South Africa called Sasol makes liquid fuels from coal." He mentioned some number of such plants they were going to be helping the Chinese build for their rapidly expanding automobile fleet; they have very little oil but plenty of coal. The technology, called coal to liquid fuels, CTL in the jargon, was developed in Germany in the 1920s and used by the Nazis in the Second World War to run their war machine. They had little access to oil, as will be the case for the whole world in the near future, so whatever the price, with slave labor it penciled out - until they lost the war. South Africa, Marco pointed out, developed their CTL conversion plants during the embargo against Apartheid. The process was largely subsidized by the government there.
Those who believe we'll run out of oil and the environment will rebound as less CO2 is poured into the atmosphere, he said, are likely to be wrong in the time frame of the next couple centuries because we probably won't run out of liquid fuels after all. That's because there is lots of coal. We either take climate stability seriously and reduce production of greenhouse gasses by straightforward choice and design, or expect a growing calamity. His understanding was that, with improved processes, CTL fuels have become competitive with oil at oil's modestly higher price range.
The real issue is this: will we cut way back on consumption to save the planet? Will we find another kind of prosperity, shared with all our other co-travelers spinning here through space, with more modest material demands? Of course one of the main points made in support of ecological cities - and Paolo's version thereof, the single structure city he calls an "arcology" - is that it would radically reduce energy demand should today's cities for cars be largely convert to compact, very functionally diverse and fine grained cities, basically three-dimensional cities rather than flat and scattered in two dimensions. Imagine commitment to ecological cities catching on and demand sliding downward while only the nearly benign energy sources of wind and sun are growing into the future. Where those lines on the graph cross - in 15 to 45 years maybe? - we could see cities and a whole civilization that are a net benefit to the planet, building soils and soaking up CO2 as nature, especially forests, are restored and busy regenerating their maximum biodiversity.
Next time at a computer I looked around the Internet for more information and found some fairly wildly varying numbers on projected costs and speed with which CTL could be brought up to mass production for taking over as the age of oil slides away - or collapses rapidly. The financial cost looked at least "feasible" by today's economic assumptions. But the environmental cost? End of the World. So Marco's basic point seemed solid.
Bingeconomics
But back to the trip to the bus stop. The conversation turned to history, the history of machines and cheap energy, first coal then oil. When the industrial revolution began in earnest about 200 years ago, say around 1800, we had approximately 900 million people on the planet. Now there is 6,700 million, an increase to about 7 ˝ times as many people, and with the average leverage of those machines and cheap energy, the average individual is using many times the resources. Exploring statistics a bit some interesting figures popped up.
1,000,000 years ago - people before utilizing fire, food only: about 2,000 Kcal/person
100,000 years ago - with primitive weapons for hunting and fire: about 5,000 Kcal/person
5,000 years ago - with agriculture, more tools, draft animals: about 12,500 Kcal/person
200 years ago - with wind and waterpower established: about 31,250 Kcal/person
Today - approximate 400,000 Kcal/person
If this is close to accurate (Internet sources for the information include US Department of Energy, Scientific American magazine, a Western Oregon University syllabus for engineering students and the Earth Systems Sciences Department of the University of Florida in Gainesville) then since the beginning of the industrial age we are now using about 13 times as much energy per person. Multiply that by 7 times as many people and the energy utilized by people is about 91 times more than in 1800. That's not counting depletion of various resources, not to speak of the hundreds of species over the brink and gone forever and climate change - but you get the idea.
So on that brief trip to the bus stop I suggested this history of tools, machines and cheap energy consumption amounted to a kind of economic binge of burning energy and building things ever more rapidly. Energy + machines = rapidly growing population and consumption per person. Why doesn't conventional economics talk about this? What we've been seeing is what could be called the economics of a very temporary binge on this planet, call it "bingeconomics." Pronounce that in the cadence of "Benjamin Franklin" - same number of syllables too. And bingeconomics is neither capitalist nor communist, but both, with their maximum demands on the earth to deliver to whoever is running the Earth exploitation system. It matters if only the elite share in the exploitation or everyone does but the exploitation itself may turn out to matter even more.
The ride to the bus stop then veered, conversationally, toward the mind set of this period of vast numbers of people and high consumption - and the fact that everyone is looking for energy source replacements and planning to use even more energy in the future. Few want to contemplate building cities that might run on one tenth the energy of today's sprawling car-dominated giants. Paolo's "lean" cities have not been of great interest to economist, investors and politicians in this period of bingeconomics. They want fat but green cities. Kirstin Miller, our Executive Director in Ecocity Builders, was on stage in China back in April and another speaker was celebrating China's rush to prosperity, it's golden GDP numbers, its bright future as an economy that would continue expanding rapidly into the deep future. But it was beginning to sound to me more like GDP didn't mean Gross Domestic Product but Gigantic Depletion Problem, the result of what Paolo these days characterizes as the great "tsunami of materialism" that shows ever stronger signs that it "will sweep us away."
Win the lottery, lose the world?
Then came the quirky thought, running out of time, pulling in close to the bus stop, which was actually and not too ironically, a gas station, and without even a bench for waiting for the bus: would we learn something from what people experience winning the lottery? Usually they go on a spending binge, upping their energy use and material consumption many times over. The mid set of that binge and the lessons of its aftermath might well inform our understanding of the mind set of people today enjoying their energy and machine binge and not wanting to think about the consequences.
The literature is stuffed with examples. Typical ones turn up with Ellen Goodstein writing for Bankrate.com. She quotes Evelyn Adams who won the New Jersey Lottery - twice amazingly enough - taking in $5.4 million. Talk about lucky! "Winning the lottery isn't always what it's cracked up to be." "Today," say Goodstein, "the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer." She quotes William Post who won $16.2 million in Pennsylvania: "I wish it never happened. It was a total nightmare." He said he was careless and foolish, trying to please his family. Goodstein reported, "A former girlfriend successfully sued him for a share of his winnings. It wasn't his only lawsuit. A brother was arrested for hiring a hit man to kill him, hoping to inherit a share of the winnings... He eventually declared bankruptcy. Now he lives quietly on $450 a month and food stamps." Susan Bradley, who authored "Sudden Money, Managing a Financial Windfall," says, "Often [the winners] can keep the money and lose family and friends -- or lose the money and keep the family and friends -- or even lose the money and lose the family and friends... Winners get into trouble because they fail to address the emotional connection to the windfall." Could this happen to all of us lost in bingeconomics with the tsunami of materialism rising on the horizon?
Will society realize it has experienced a planetary, species wide windfall and deal with it well, invest it wisely, or will society, for the emotional reasons of enjoying the splendid fast times be utterly unwilling to look at what's really going on and the wise words of a Paolo Soleri counseling us to live lean and healthy - and build that way.
Richard can be reached at ecocity@igc.org or www.ecocitybuilders.org
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Car-Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
It's still summer, and a great time to enjoy the beach. One lesson I've learned is not to give up too soon. When checking out a beach where you can either leave your car at the hotel (or a park & ride if you are visiting for the day), or get to your beach destination by public transportation, don't accept the typical negative reactions you are likely to get.
For example, a Washington Post reader wrote the Travel Q&A editor that she wanted to visit Rehoboth Beach, DE for the weekend, but didn't drive. The solution, according to the editor, was to take a Greyhound to Ocean City, MD's park & ride lot, a shuttle bus to downtown Ocean City, a third Ocean City bus to the north Ocean City Transit Center, and finally connect with a DART (Delaware Resort Transit) bus to the Rehoboth Park & Ride (plus, she forgot to add: take another bus to the Rehoboth Boardwalk).
Sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Would these directions encourage you to visit that beach? More likely, you'd run as far away as possible-maybe even stay at home.
The Washington Post editor didn't mention that there is a much simpler and less expensive way to travel to Rehoboth Beach. Amtrak's Northeast Regional trains stop at Wilmington, DE. During the summer, DART's express bus: #305 takes beachgoers (Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday) from the train station to Rehoboth Beach in approximately two hours for a cost of just $7.50 each way. And a one-day round trip is just $9.45. (Of course, you would need an additional $2.10 for the all day bus pass for the Resort Transit buses serving Rehoboth and other nearby beach communities.)
Compare the two answers. The first sounds exhausting, time consuming, and expensive. The second means a train ride to Wilmington, and a two hour bus ride on an express bus. And if you plan carefully, you can walk or take Resort Transit buses to many Delaware beaches, a few state parks, and nearby communities-for just $2.10 for an all-day bus pass.
But, you sometimes need to do even more research. I originally thought that after Labor Day, there was no way to get to Rehoboth without driving.
I was wrong. On weekdays only, it is possible to get to Rehoboth Beach from Wilmington. (However, it requires taking three buses.) (For more information about DART's summer beach service, visit http://www.dartfirststate.com.)
Here are some other beaches you can enjoy without a car this summer:
- Ogunquit ME,
- Roger Wheeler State Park RI,
- Point Pleasant Beach NJ,
- Isle of Palms SC,
- Ludington MI,
- Cleveland OH,
- Padre Island TX, and
- Seaside OR.
(And these are just a few. There are many others that can be enjoyed without driving.)
All of these beaches can be reached by public transportation. If you need to drive, it's easy to find a hotel or other accommodation where you can leave your car, and walk or take public transportation to the beach and other attractions.
I still remember how much fun I had several years ago when visiting my stepson in Brooklyn, NY. From Penn Station in New York City, it was just a one-hour ride to Long Beach on Long Island. No traffic, no gasoline expense, no parking problems-just a relaxing train ride, and a five-minute walk to the beach.
You don't need to live in the New York City metropolitan area to take the train to the beach.
For example, the Oceanside CA beach is just a five-minute walk from the train station.
Before giving up on a car-free vacation at the beach of your choice, call the local public transportation provider or the visitors' center. Find out where the local bus goes that is near the beach. If driving seems to be the only way to get there from out of town, is there another way to get there that is easy to overlook?
"read on"
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Ecocity World Summit 2009
Istanbul Turkey, December 13-15
Organized by Yildiz Technical University, Ecocity Builders and Parantez International
The Basilica Cistern is situated close to the Haghia Sophia. It is a huge cistern with three spots that are particularly popular: two Medusa heads supporting columns, another is a column with a peacock feather motive.
Photo by Dick Osseman
EARLY REGISTRATION ENDS AUGUST 31ST. REGISTER NOW WITH REG-ONLINE http://www.ecocity2009.com
Speakers to Date
Invitation and Organization
Lutfi Kirdar Convention Center
Photos of Istanbul
Speakers include:
Ken Yeang - Bioclimatic architect, LONDON-MALAYSIAL
Suha Ozkan - World Architects, TURKEY
Wang Rusong - Chinese Academy of Science, CHINA
Agni Vlavianos-Arvanitis - Biopolitics, GREECE
Ong Beng Lee, Director (Eco-city Project Office), Ministry of National Development, SINGAPORE
Wulf Daseking, Director of Planning City of Freiburg, GERMANY
Brent Toderian, Director of Planning, Vancouver, BC, CANADA
Sudarshan Tiwari, Architect and City Historian, Katmandu, NEPAL
Paul Downton, Ecopolis Architects, Adelaide, AUSTRALIA
Parris Glendening, former Governor of Maryland, President, Smart Growth Leadership Institute, USA
Colin Grant, Founder and CEO, Visible Strategies, Vancouver, CANADA
Arnold J. Goldman - Chairman and Founder, BrightSource Energy, Inc., Israel - USA
Walter Hood, Principal, HOOD Design, Professor, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Richard Register - Ecocity Builders, USA
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Amsterdam to become most energy-saving city of Europe
On June 3, the first European Smart City was launched by alderman Marijke Vos and Director Liander Peter Molengraaf. Amsterdam Smart City is an initiative of grid operator Liander and AIM (Amsterdamse Innovatie Motor) to contribute to the ambition of making Amsterdam the most energy-saving city of Europe.
Minister Jacqueline Cramer of VROM (Housing, Regional Development and Environment): "Amsterdam Smart City is a very daring, ambitious plan. Companies and local government institutions work together in different fields to make the city more energy-saving. This approach not only benefits the environment and health of Amsterdam citizens, but also the spending power and
employment. This is the way the cabinet of the Netherlands likes to see it: municipalities addressing the climate and credit crisis at the same time. The experiences gained from Amsterdam amongst others can be applied elsewhere in the world."
Within a period of two years, 15 sub-projects will be set up in four different areas: Sustainable Work, Living, Mobility and Public Spaces.
The first projects are already in preparation. Under the title of Sustainable Public Spaces, starting from June 5th, the Utrechtsestraat in Amsterdam will be transformed into the most sustainable shopping street in Europe in cooperation with the local entrepreneurs. As part of Sustainable Work, the prestigious ITO tower in the Amsterdam Zuidas area will also be made sustainable with the help of the latest smart building technology. As an element of Sustainable Mobility, preparations are made to install electrical charging points in the port of Amsterdam so ships do not need to use the polluting diesel generators. As part of Sustainable Living, in consultation with the residents, 728 residences in the Geuzenveld district will be provided with energy-saving tools based on smart meters.
By focusing on the end user, employing knowledge institutions for measuring results and addressing not only new, but also older buildings, Amsterdam Smart City is selected by the European Union as a Benchmark of Excellence by the Covenant of Mayors. This covenant is signed by mayors from more
than 500 European cities that want to invest in sustainability.
Amsterdam Smart City aims to contribute to the climate objectives of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Europe. In 2025 Amsterdam intends to have reduced its CO2 emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990, thus fulfilling a leading role in the field of sustainability worldwide. The municipal organization intends to be completely climate friendly by 2015.
Initiator AIM is involved with Amsterdam Smart City by bridging between government and business by stimulating innovation in the Amsterdam region- including the field of Smart Energy. Co-initiator Liander desires to facilitate the transition to sustainable energy supply as much as possible. In Amsterdam Smart City, together with municipal and business, Liander can proactively anticipate
chances and developments in this area.
Amsterdam Smart City will complete a growing number of sub-projects over the next two years thus will become more and more visible. You can find detailed information and follow the developments closely via the website www.amsterdamsmartcity.nl
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Colin Grant Weighs In
Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and is contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging. Colin is a Speaker at Ecocity 2009 in Istanbul.
Please Don't Hate me for Questioning Obama
In the early days of Obama-Mania, I incurred a little of the wrath of some friends and colleagues, (it happens sometimes), when I suggested that Mr Obama might have missed the critical deliverable of his presidency in the first week or two.
Back in those heady days of "Yes We Can!" being dropped wittily or otherwise into far too many conversations and as folk recovered from eight years of Bush/Cheyneyism, it probably seemed churlish to challenge America's great new hope who was catching the imagination of so many worldwide. But it does seem more and more apparent that there is a major gap in the Obama efforts to transform the US and it is a gap that exists in far too many cities as they try to morph into a form appropriate to meet the challenges of the 21st century, (known to some as EcoCities).
The first couple of weeks of the Obama administration were a whirlwind of (mainly), well-choreographed, decisive tactical actions that showed that this administration was for Change - the Guantanamo Bay closure being a perfect example. But where was the clear Vision for a New American Dream or something similar? What exactly was Change going to produce, and by when - what are the goals that show Change has happened?
What we got, I would argue, was something of a hodge-podge of strategies and tactics that, because they are not related to clear Vision and Goals, often end up contradicting each other. For instance we all know that Mr Obama stands for more renewable energy, more green jobs, better healthcare, and many other things, but there wasn't a clearly picture of what a city epitomizing the New American Dream would be like by, say 2020 and therefore a clear framework for allocation of stimulus funding.
We now find that stimulus funds are, for instance, being spent on enlarging some of the US's biggest airports including St. Louis, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. Perhaps some conflict there with the oratory around a low carbon future, (and no, promised efficiencies from Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and other new "green" aircraft or some mythical bio-air-fuel won't offset the increases in air traffic one would expect from airport expansion under "normal" economic conditions).
Actually, we are far more likely to see lots of aircraft piling up and rusting around these expanded airports as either fewer people can afford to travel through an extended recession or depression or as peak oil bites again as economic recovery increases demand and sends the airlines into another round of bankruptcy tail spins. How much better if the money being spent on airports was instead put into the plan to rebuild the US rail system to catch up at least some of the decades it lags behind leaders in Europe and Japan, resulting in an efficient, safer, lower carbon and lower cost transportation system.
Or take the "Clunkers for Cash" program that should have been a final, belated shock treatment for those surviving US auto manufacturers to get their house in order to shift to 21st century green, mass transit production. What we ended up with was another desperate attempt to get money thrown at trifling, unsustainable "solutions" that, again, clash with Mr Obama's climate change agenda and the reality of a carbon-constrained world .
How is the US going to keep all those highways paved over the next decade or two with exponentially increasing debt and oil prices likely to push up to last years highs and probably through the $200/barrel mark before long, sending the cost of highway and bridge repairs through the roof, just as business and income tax receipts required to pay for these splutter and fail and long-ignored social welfare costs explode?
This failure to follow up the wonderful oratory and rhetoric with a really tangible combination of Vision and Goals may end up being seen as a tragic omission as this one-off spending bonanza that could have transformed the US into the EcoCity capital of the world is over and we find that so much was spent on so little that was of real, lasting benefit. When the US is left with a crippling debt mountain perhaps equal to its entire output within as little as ten years, history may not be kind on the first 200 days of the Obama administration.
One can predict some spectacular headlines in the months ahead as we find out what some the stimulus funds were really spent on. These will largely be red herrings, as there will always be abuses when sums like these are involved. However, it is the failure to really capture the desired future Vision and Goals in "Apollo Mission" terms that may well be the tragedy that (not-too-distant) historians may well lament.
It is these two elements of Vision and Goals that are absolutely critical in driving effective change and ensuring that we don't take almost as many steps backwards as we do forwards and most cities do not have these in place. If we are to see an "EcoCity" revolution, Vision and Goals must emerge first.
A Vision is, as the word suggests, something we should be able to see, often traditionally when listening to a great orator or storyteller, (which Mr Obama clearly is), and more recently, something that can be created in many visualization tools, some of which were presented in the technology session I presented in at the last EcoCities conference in San Francisco. Of course, old fashioned tools like artists can be employed here too! From a good vision, people should be able to "see" or "feel" the desired future.
All too often in place of an empowering and inspiring vision we get bland, meaningless, lowest common denominator, made by committee "Vision Statements" such as:
"Greentown aims to be among the most sustainable communities in the world by 2020".
Ask any group of staff and/or elected officials of Greentown what the most sustainable communities in the world are today and what they will be like by 2020 and what that means in terms of tangible goals for Greentown and you will likely witness much in the way of confused looks, hopeful glances at colleagues, shrugged shoulders and shuffling of paper.
Goals should be tangible and measurable and locked in time. Vision and Goals should work hand in hand to inspire belief in the future and clear deliverables, accountability and urgency.
By the way, if anyone knows of city, (or regional or national), web site that does a good job of conveying Vision and Goals, please send the links my way.
cgrant@visiblestrategies.com
Link to more information about Colin Grant and his company, Visible Strategies, offering the world's most visually-engaging performance management and communications software, SEE-IT.
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Fact sheet: The Nairobi Framework
Above: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived, greeted by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. (Photo by Bernard Wahihia, UNEP)
The Nairobi Framework, adopted in 2006 and launched by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan, aims to help developing countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, to improve their level of participation in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and enhance the CDM's geographical scope. The CDM enables sustainable development projects in developing countries that reduce emissions (or enhance sinks through afforestation or reforestation).
The Nairobi Framework was initiated by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the
World Bank Group, the African Development Bank and the Secretariat of
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
In May 2009 there are 30 registered CDM projects in 8 countries. These projects activities are expected to generate 50,765,223 Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), i.e. They are expected to reduce 50,765,223 tonnes of CO2 or CO2 equivalent by 2012. (Humanity generates approximately 8.3 gigatons, or billion tonnes of CO2 burning fossil fuels per year at this point in history. That's 8,380 million tonnes world wide while the program should
save about 51 million tons, or a reduction of .6% - a little more than one 200th of the total. A significant start. Ed.)
Focus of the Nairobi Framework
- Build capacity in developing CDM project activities
- Build and enhance capacity of CDM Designated National Authorities to become fully operational
- Promote investment opportunities for projects
- Improve information sharing / outreach / exchange of views on activities / education and training
- Inter-agency coordination
According to the World Bank, increased capacity development in 2007 has resulted in a pipeline of 30 CDM projects.
With a view to further scale up their efforts, all agencies under the Nairobi Framework together developed a comprehensive Joint Programme Proposal which was launched in Bali in December 2007 and for which they are seeking donor support.
An important element of this scaling-up effort is the Africa Carbon Forum, which took place in Senegal in September 2008 under the umbrella of the Nairobi Framework. Organized by partner UN agencies and the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), it provided a unique opportunity for countries in the region to present their projects and for the private sector to enhance their participation in CDM on the continent. Positive outcomes included consolidation of private and public sector support for the Africa Bio-Fuels and Renewable Energy Fund (ABREF) with pledges to the tune of 20 million USD.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has recently joined the partner agencies of the Nairobi Framework.
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Alexandria City Council Approves Eco-City Alexandria Environmental Action Plan 2030
 Facilitators record community comments at Alexandria Virginia's Eco City Café.
The City Council of Alexandria, Virginia, USA unanimously approved the first Eco-City Alexandria Environmental Action Plan 2030, which consists of 48 goals, 50 preliminary targets, and 353 actions that span over the next 20 years. The Environmental Action Plan 2030 is the final planning document that outlines the goals and actions required to implement the vision of the Eco-City Environmental Charter (adopted June 2008).
The Environmental Action Plan is the latest accomplishment for the Eco-City Alexandria Initiative, developed through a partnership between the City of Alexandria, the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services, the City's Environmental Policy Commission and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Urban Affairs & Planning. The goal of the initiative is to guide Alexandria towards a more sustainable environmental future.
Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille said, "The Environmental Action Plan 2030 is a culmination of hard work and dedication on the part of Vice Mayor Redella S. Del Pepper, Councilman Krupicka, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Urban Affairs & Planning program, and the Environmental Policy Commission. With this plan, together we can move forward in building an environmentally sustainable City for all residents to enjoy for generations to come."
More Information
Visit www.alexandriava.gov/Eco-City or contact the Department of
Transportation & Environmental Services, Office of Environmental
Quality at 703.746.4065.
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
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Click here for more information and to register for classes
in the Sustainable Design Program at UC Berkeley Extension.
Go Green with Berkeley!
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