Compost Bins on the South Lawn
Posted by Matthew Brian Hersh on July 2, 2009
According to the Sierra Club, of the 31 million tons of food waste tossed each year in the United States, only 3 percent is actually recycled, so I was particularly happy when I read the report on Ecorazzi.org that the vegetable garden being grown on the south lawn of the White House will benefit from composted soil next season, rather than having it shipped in this year.
The waste compost bins will hopefully be used to underline the increasing importance of sourcing one’s food, learning about slow foods, and, of course, putting to use some of that unused space in your yard or neighborhood.
But what’s particularly encouraging about this is that endeavors like these make the concept of community gardening less foreign, more engaging, and, most important, more mainstream, as we’ve discussed here on Rooflines.
Continued... · 0 Comments
Gary Never Forgot: A Suffering Steel Town Clings to Jackson Legacy
Posted by Kari Lydersen on July 1, 2009
The eyes of the world were focused on Gary, Indiana in the days following Michael Jackson’s June 25 death. People marveled at the tiny house where Michael spent his first 11 years.
Spending the two days after his death in oppressive heat and swarms of mosquitoes outside the Jackson home while on assignment, I was personally intrigued to learn more about the King of Pop’s childhood; and just as much to get a closer look at Gary and the ways it has changed since the Jacksons moved out four decades ago.
Gary, Indiana was a city alive with music when the Jackson Five were starting out in the 1960s. It was a gritty but stable working class steel town on Lake Michigan where the public schools had a lively arts program that encouraged youth to perform on stage.
Continued... · 0 Comments
Neighborhood Schools that Work for Kids, Communities, & the Environment
Posted by Kaid Benfield on June 30, 2009
Smart Growth Schools expert Nathan Norris lists eleven key principles for measuring how well schools and school policies fit in with their communities. I really like them:
Restoration Preference: Will old schools be restored rather than replaced so long as the cost is less than a new school?
Holistic Planning Is school planning done in conjunction with land planning and transportation planning?
Community buy-in: Is the school planning process designed in a way to secure meaningful community input?
Elimination of design constraints: Do you have the flexibility to design the school efficiently for the site and the community?
Continued... · 1 Comments
Tracking Job Creation in the Nonprofit Sector
Posted by Matthew Brian Hersh on June 29, 2009
Rick Cohen, a long-time Shelterforce contributor and editor of The Nonprofit Quarterly’s “Cohen Report” wrote last week on the importance of nonprofits tracking their own industry’s job growth as a result of additional funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, better knows as the Stimulus.
Cohen points to potential employment increases in city and county summer jobs (where nonprofits would likely play roles in placing those jobs), and new positions created in health care, housing, and in the service industry.
Cohen then calls on the sector to track any growth:
“What the sector needs is better record-keeping and monitoring about what it is accomplishing and what hurdles it is facing. Otherwise, when the history of the stimulus is written, one might have a difficult time fully appreciating what the nonprofit sector was prepared to deliver to revitalize the U.S. economy.”
0 Comments
Joint Center’s Housing Report Points to Challenges Ahead
Posted by Rooflines on June 29, 2009
Describing the problems facing the housing market today as “hard to overstate,” representatives from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies last week announced the release of the 2009 “State of the Nation’s Housing” report. The report, which acknowledges the depressed state of the housing market, points to negative macro forces that are still in play, despite “unprecedented federal efforts to jumpstart the economy and help homeowners keep up with their mortgage payments.”
With 3.2 million homeowners entering foreclosure in 2007-2008, the report states that any recovery will likely be prolonged.
Continued... · 0 Comments
Revitalizing Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine (Series Conclusion - Making It Green)
Posted by Kaid Benfield on June 23, 2009
This is the final installment of my miniseries (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) about Cincinnati’s remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, potentially a national model for smart, green revitalization. The reason that revitalizing Over-the-Rhine should be just as important to environmentalists as it is to historic preservation, economic recovery, and social equity is that revitalizing such a centrally located district is inherently green, even if you aren’t trying to make it so.
Centrally located neighborhoods almost always have lower carbon emissions, simply because per-capita driving rates are so much higher in outer, spread-out locations where driving distances are longer, transit less convenient, and little within walking distance. In fact, census data indicate that Over-the-Rhine residents drive alone to work only about a third as much as residents from the state of Ohio as a whole; OTR residents are 12 times more likely to take transit to work than residents of the state as a whole.
Continued... · 0 Comments
A Third Strand of Sustainable Housing
Posted by David Holtzman on June 21, 2009
There’s quite a jumble of tools out there for people who want to make their houses into models of energy efficiency. As far as the best way to go about achieving higher levels of sustainability at home, I’ve been aware for some time of at least two competing philosophies. First, you have the pro-conservation camp, that calls for wearing more sweaters in the winter time, but also sealing homes tightly with weatherstripping and heavy-duty insulation. Then there is the renewable energy camp, which is bullish on solar panels and wind towers as the answer to peak oil and dirty coal.
The second camp is banking on major investments in solar and wind in the next few years, while we have a pro-sustainability administration. The pro-conservation camp isn’t holding its breath. Such investments are not feasible today for most individual property owners, and many things can be done now that are way cheaper.
Continued... · 1 Comments
Tracking the Recession and the Recovery
Posted by Matthew Brian Hersh on June 18, 2009
The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings announced today the launch of its MetroMonitor, a tool that measures the health of 100 of America’s largest metropolitan economies. The tools aims to look “beneath the hood of national economic statistics to portray the diverse metropolitan trajectories of recession and recovery across the country.”
The MetroMonitor looks at the overall performance of these economies as related to each other, using various indicators such as employment (and unemployment) rates, wages, REOs, housing prices,
You can view it here.
0 Comments
Revitalizing Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine (Part 3 - the Progress)
Posted by Kaid Benfield on June 15, 2009
This was going to be the final installment of my miniseries about Cincinnati’s remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, but I’m on too much of a roll to finish today. (Or, as my man Van would put it, “it’s too late to stop now.”) But this is a nice problem to have, really. Nothing is more important to urban sustainability than revitalization and I love that this story is so rich with possibility. Today we’ll look at some of the impressive, hopeful beginnings.
Over-the-Rhine may have a long way to go in order to become the model of revitalization that it can be, but one has to be impressed with what’s happening there. In 2002, the city of Cincinnati published a comprehensive plan for bringing the 362-acre neighborhood back to life, with a refurbished city park, streetscape investments, and mixed residential, commercial, and retail development, much of it in rehabbed 19th-century buildings. A streetcar is also in the works.
Most of the implementation is being carried out by the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a private, non-profit corporation whose latest progress report states that, in the past three years, it has invested $70 million in the revitalization of OTR. Much of that has gone into rehabbing buildings around Washington Park in the south of the neighborhood, now known as The Gateway Quarter. The completed Gateway projects so far comprise 103 residences, plus 7 commercial and live/work units in Phase I, and an additional 20,000 square feet of commercial space in Phase II. (see photos.) Phases III and IV are coming, and count me among those who would love to live there.
Continued... · 0 Comments
Kelo v. Sotomayor
Posted by Andrew Macurak on June 15, 2009
Kelo v. New London remains a sticky subject. (Ongoing debate in Shelterforce and Rooflines is proof of that.) The 2005 Supreme Court case that upheld a municipality’s ability to take private land for private development in the public interest is surfacing again as right-wingers search for ammunition to derail the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
National Housing Institute
