michelle kaufmann designs

Photos by Paige Green Photo

We had a great Re:Vision Salon last Thursday night Wade Crowfoot, West Coast Political Director for the Environmental Defense Fund, as the guest. The group and the conversation were dynamic and inspiring. The group included Wade, the team with Urban Re:Vision, Allison Arieff, Janelle Kellman, Ted Van Der Linden, Scott Badenoch, Warren Karlenzig, Christine Arena, Barry Hooper, Sally Dominguez, Nathaniel Corum, Bryan Burkhart, and other friends and colleagues.

Wade started the discussion by speaking a bit about his work which focuses on bringing EDF’s policy ideas to life through the legislative and political process. Policies he focuses on include climate, water and energy. He spoke about a few of the programs that the city of San Francisco has been working on. One of my favorites is the “Pavements to Parks” program.  Allison Arieff had written about this program in her New York Times blog: arieff.blogs.nytimes.com
The program was wildly popular and is spreading quickly.

photo courtesy San Francisco Bicycle Coalition / Allison Arieff NY Times Blog

Wade also spoke about the Livable Cities program on the Embarcadero and the Mission and walkable cities: www.livablecity.org. This has been another successful program. One program that has not been successful, however, was the carbon tax attempt: www.blognewcomb.com
There was a lot of discussion about this during the Salon, as it seems like a great idea, but is politically loaded.

In addition to talking about a few of the city’s policies and what has worked and not worked, there was also discussion about how cities do (or in most cases don’t) share information. Interestingly, many cities are in competition with one another in terms of how green they are. So sharing information with other cities is not a high priority. Plus, most cities do not have the resources for dedicating to sharing information. However, since this is a global issue, if a community in one city is focused on programs and policies to save water, energy and improve health, if the other cities around it are not doing that, what is the point? There were great suggestions from the group about an open source program for city’s green programs and initiatives similar to Architecture for Humanity’s architectural open source program. (www.architectureforhumanity.org )

When asked what we as designers, writers, makers, thinkers, citizens can do to help support the city and state’s environmental policies, Wade responded, “What is your passion? Define that, and then get involved to help support that.”  While one can sometimes feel helpless with such a big global issue and feel like there is really nothing we can do, Wade’s personal story of his career as well as his descriptions of these policies and how they became successful through community support, I (and many others in the group) left feeling empowered and optimistic.

Here are some links that you might find helpful from the Salon conversation:

arieff.blogs.nytimes.com
sfpavementtoparks
http://www.sustainlane.us
www.creativecitizen.com
www.ecomattersdaily.com
www.openarchitecturenetwork.org
urbanrevision.org

You can also follow some of the conversation on twitter with the tag #urs.
search.twitter.com
Our next Salon will be about Urban Agriculture and will be held on November 12th. Email or tweet me any questions or comments you might have for that Salon. My twitter: mkaufmann.