by Diana Louise Carter | Thursday, March 10, 2016 | EcoDistrict, FlourGarden, Futures Summit, GardenAerial, Green Visions, Greentopia
February 18, 2016, marked the fifth anniversary of Greentopia’s incorporation. So what does our five-year-old organization have to show for those years? Plenty!
- Four years of free Greentopia festivals to raise awareness of sustainability and green assets in downtown Rochester, bringing more than 50,000 people (many for the first time) to High Falls.
- Four years of Film Festivals to call attention to green issues and sustainability.
- Three Futures Summit conferences, bringing in speakers from around the country to talk about urban sustainability and green redevelopment.
- Purchase of a large section of the High Falls cataract to preserve it as part of the GardenAerial project.
- Three years of Green Visions, a job training program that has provided 20 weeks each year of job training and employment for young people in the JOSANA neighborhood, while producing beautiful gardens to beautify the neighborhood and provide cut flowers to sell.
- The beginning of New York’s first EcoDistrict, a district that will share ideas and green projects to work and live more sustainably in and around the north side of downtown Rochester.
- Awards and recognition, including being named a “top priority” transformational project by the Sustainability Workgroup of the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council.
- A massive Dinner on the Bridge, calling attention to and raising money for Greentopia’s initiatives, including the GardenAerial circling the canyon around High Falls.
- The completed FlourGarden: a running water, native plants garden with sculptures and lighted fixtures on Brown’s Race, the very first capital development project of the GardenAerial.
- Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council; Metabolic Studio; The Farash Foundation; The Community Foundation; Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation; and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (among others).
- And the support of hundreds of individual and corporate donors for events, programs, and capital projects. Won’t you join with us?
And we’re just getting started.
by Diana Louise Carter | Tuesday, October 20, 2015 | Greentopia
You’ve heard about the dynamite keynote speakers and, undoubtedly, about the unveiling of a new film about the Garden Aerial, Greentopia’s capital project surrounding the High Falls. But if those attractions haven’t persuaded you to sign up yet for the Futures Summit, here are a few more in the form of distinguished panelists:
Ted Trabue – A fourth-generation Washingtonian, Trabue is managing director of the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility. His 30 years in public affairs, include working as executive director of the Green Builders Council of the District of Columbia and two terms as president of the DC State Board of Education.
Rebecca Salminen Witt — Witt is president of The Greening of Detroit, a 25 year old non-profit environmental organization that works to secure the ecosystem of Detroit, Michigan by coordinating tree plantings, supporting community gardening, providing outdoor education to Detroit schoolchildren and sponsoring green jobs training programs for teenagers and adults.
Susan Spencer – A Rochester native from a Kodak family, Spencer was earning her PhD from Rochester Institute of Technology when she decided to focus on affordable solar power. She founded ROCSPOT to create a solar-powered Rochester, and is a player in national and international solar policy discussions.
M. Andre Primus – Another Rochesterian, Primus has created RocShare, an organization to promote alternative economics such as sharing.
Svante L. Myrick – Ithaca’s youngest mayor and first one of color, Myrick first held political office at age 20, when he was still a student at Cornell University. He was elected mayor when he was 24 and quickly restructured the city government to close a $3 million deficit. He turned the mayor’s parking spot into a mini-park and has renovated Ithaca’s long-neglected pedestrian mall.
Jessica Millman – An expert in urban planning, environmentally sustainable development and smart growth, Millman is a founding member of the LEED for Neighborhood Development Core Committee in the Washington, DC, region. She works on a national level on sustainable neighborhoods and is a leader of the National Resource Defense Council’s Green Neighborhoods Program.
Naomi Davis — Davis teaches a three-semester course in Grannynomics and Green-Village Building at the University of Chicago/Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Her heritage as the granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers informs her expertise in urban homestead, and mixed-use real estate development. She also is founder and CEO of BIG (Blacks In Green,) a self-sustaining economic development organization in Woodlawn, IL.
by Diana Louise Carter | Friday, October 9, 2015 | EcoDistrict, Environment, Greentopia, Leadership Series
As a travel writer for publications such as National Geographic, Taras Grescoe travels around the world. But he doesn’t own a car. In fact, the Montreal resident says 90 percent of his transit is by foot, bicycle or subway. His keen observations while moving around cities from Moscow to Bogota led to his 2012 book, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile.
Grescoe will be the mid-day keynote speaker at Greentopia’s Futures Summit Oct. 21 at Monroe Community College. While he sometimes uses a car-sharing service in Montreal, he says exercising individual rights by driving cars “is diminishing the commons for everybody.” Personal automobiles hog urban space and make moving around harder for others, he claims, adding that nearly one-third of urban residents don’t or can’t drive a car.
“The biggest obstacle is the presumption that every citizen has access to a car,” Grescoe told a transportation conference in Portland, OR two years ago. “Transit is about mobility, not trains or buses,” he said. Some examples include moving ramps in hilly cities in South America that turn an arduous, 30-minute walk uphill into a five-minute ride. Or the “Mom bike” in Japan, an inexpensive bicycle that allows a parent to peddle along with two children. Or the “cargo bike” in Denmark, where an adult can carry a week’s worth of groceries or up to three children.
Bigger modes of transportation, such as subways or light rail, work best when they’re not competing for space with cars and when they’re speedy and well connected, Grescoe said. He suggests cities go for low-hanging transit fruit by providing services in the more densely populated parts of a city that were perhaps designed for pedestrian traffic before automobiles became ubiquitous in the American landscape.
by Diana Louise Carter | Sunday, September 13, 2015 | Futures Summit, Greentopia
When Jason Roberts wanted to improve his neighborhood in Dallas, he found many of the things that make cities livable — flowers planted on the street, café tables, trees and bike lanes, were actually illegal or came with a heavy fee. So he decided to do them anyway for a single block over a single weekend to help people visualize how welcoming their community would be with this forbidden features.
Storefronts were decked out as temporary stores. Trees destined to be planted at a hotel made a two-day rest-stop at Roberts’ barren block. Guerilla city planners painted a verboten bike lane. A bike tour was organized that drew 150 riders. Then people were invited to shop at the temporary boutiques and eat at temporary outdoor cafes.
After neighbors and city officials enjoyed the event, the neighborhood began to change to match that vision. City ordinances were amended to allow more neighborhood-friendly amenities. One of the fake stores, an art studio, stayed on and became a real one. And that was just the beginning. He told the story breathlessly for a TED talk.
Roberts and the organization he co-founded, Team Better Block, continue to work at making Dallas a more livable city, and not just for those folks who drive cars. He’s the opening keynote speaker at Greentopia’s Futures Summit Oct. 21 at Monroe Community College. To find out more about the summit or register, visit here. And dream about a better city.
by Diana Louise Carter | Tuesday, September 1, 2015 | Futures Summit, Greentopia, Michael Philipson
Greentopia’s Futures Summit, where exciting ideas for the future are discussed today, comes to MCC’s Brighton Campus Wednesday, Oct. 21. “We want to disrupt people’s thinking – get them to critically analyze everything that is happening in our city,” said Michael Philipson, co-founder of Greentopia. Here are some great reasons to get involved and get informed about “Cities of the Future,” the 2015 Summit’s theme:
- It’s dirt cheap: Thanks to support from NYSERDA, the summit is free to students and educators with ID, $20 for senior citizens. Regular admission is $45, $55 for last minute arrivals. Admission includes keynote talks and workshops by leading national thinkers on urban reclamation, energy and green development. There’s also free parking, continental breakfast, lunch and snacks. You can register here.
- Jason Roberts of Dallas, co-creator of Team Better Block, which finds ways to make city blocks more livable and walkable without years of municipal foot-dragging. He’s the opening keynote speaker.
- Antwi A. Akom, professor at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Institute for Sustainable Economic, Educational and Environmental Design. ISEEED focuses on building sustainable cities and schools, as well as improving living conditions of poor people. Akom is also the summit’s closing keynote speaker.
- Taras Grescoe, Montreal author of Straphanger, a book looking at the public transit systems of the great cities of the world and advocating for a rebirth of public transit to take back cities from the wasting influence of automobiles. Grescoe is the summit’s lunchtime keynote speaker.
- Rebecca Salminen Witt, president of The Greening of Detroit, which reclaims forsaken green spaces in the Midwest city to encourage community connections. Once devoted to boosting the urban forest (17,000 trees planted,) the organization now also oversees community gardens and workforce development, with 400 seasonal employees.
- Ted Trabue, managing director of District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility, a utility company devoted to saving customers money through energy conservation. Previously, Trabue help create and was executive director of Green Builders Council of DC, the largest green training program in Washington.
- Several other speakers and plenty of time between sessions to rub elbows with them all.
