Evergreen: Advancing Urban Sustainability
Join the Meeting of the Minds Email List
Meeting of the Minds catalyzes the transition to sustainable, equitable, connected cities through a unique knowledge sharing platform. Complete this form to receive updates on events and resources related to the future of cities.
The world is undergoing a rapid and unprecedented process of urbanization. Today, about 85 percent of us live in cities, a jump of nearly 50 percent in a mere 30 years.
As urban populations grow, greater pressures are placed on natural green spaces both within existing built-up areas and beyond. Underlying this challenge is the fact that traditional city building has shown little regard for the ecological features and functions that support the natural systems upon which we all depend.
To make way for streets, buildings and bridges, forests have been cleared, wetlands drained and waterways polluted or buried altogether. It’s no surprise that city dwellers often feel a sense of disconnect from nature, which they assume can only be experienced in the wilderness areas beyond city limits.
Evergreen, a Canadian charity, has been responding to this challenge for over 20 years, advancing urban sustainability through a range of hands-in the-dirt projects.
To foster an ethos of environmental stewardship and appreciation of the natural world, Evergreen’s approach has been to give communities the tools to transform their own neighbourhoods through collective action. Our work traditionally focused on parks, school grounds and other shared public spaces, supporting projects that include habitat restoration, food gardens, public art and more.
Evergreen Brick Works
As Evergreen has grown, so has the lens through which we are address pressing urban challenges. Most notably, Evergreen led the transformation of an abandoned brick factory into Evergreen Brick Works—an international showcase for green design and urban innovation. Located in the heart of Toronto’s extensive urban ravine system, the site is a dynamic venue that engages both the public, through our farmers’ market and children’s programs, and urban planners and innovators, by showcasing emerging ideas and solutions in urban sustainability.
At every step, the development and design of the Brick Works was guided by natural systems, which one will see embedded in the technologies and innovations (both new and old) featured on-site—from solar chimneys and rainwater cisterns to pervious parking lots and naturalized greenways. On track to receive Platinum LEED certification, the site is a model for adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and the redevelopment of a brownfield into a dynamic public asset. The principles and values it embodies makes it the perfect venue for hosting Meeting of the Minds this September.
Evergreen CityWorks
Evergreen Brick Works is also home base for Evergreen’s national programs as well as our newest initiative, Evergreen CityWorks. Building on over 20 years of experience as a leader in the green city movement, CityWorks advances urban resilience by focusing on systems-level change. By convening leading urban thinkers, innovators and entrepreneurs, Evergreen is exploring innovative and sustainable approaches to how we design, build and optimize urban infrastructure systems—from rooftop gardens and solar panels to smart grids and efficient transit networks.
Since its launch, CityWorks has fostered new thinking through workshops, leadership forums and public Innovation Talks. We are also driving collaborative action through key projects, such as the Transportation Lab and the Lower Don Greenway initiative. In 2012, we hosted MOVE: The Transportation Expo, our first in a series of public expositions that celebrate and advance cutting-edge ideas from across our region and around the globe.
One of CityWorks’ priorities is to promote new models that make urban infrastructure more efficient and sustainable worldwide. As part of this effort, Evergreen is leading Our Urban Future, a collaborative research project with the World Bank, World Economic Forum and UNEP, which will forecast municipal infrastructure spending over the coming decades and use tools such as scenario planning to better prepare for future uncertainties.
Evergreen is very excited to be collaborating with Urban Age Institute on Meeting of the Minds 2013, the first time this high-level event will be held outside the US. We look forward to welcoming you to Toronto this fall!
Discussion
Leave your comment below, or reply to others.
Please note that this comment section is for thoughtful, on-topic discussions. Admin approval is required for all comments. Your comment may be edited if it contains grammatical errors. Low effort, self-promotional, or impolite comments will be deleted.
Read more from MeetingoftheMinds.org
Spotlighting innovations in urban sustainability and connected technology
COVID-19 is Creating the Largest Ever Telecommunity, But Not for Everyone
Social distancing is becoming the new normal, at least for those of us who are heeding the Center for Disease Control’s warnings and guidelines. But if you don’t have reliable, high-speed broadband, it is impossible to engage in what is now the world’s largest telecommunity. As many schools and universities around the world (including those of my kids) are shut down, these institutions are optimistically converting to online and digital learning. However, with our current broadband layout, this movement will certainly leave many Americans behind.
How to Move More People with Fewer Vehicles
Accenture analysts recently released a report calling for cities to take the lead in creating coordinated, “orchestrated” mobility ecosystems. Limiting shared services to routes that connect people with mass transit would be one way to deploy human-driven services now and to prepare for driverless service in the future. Services and schedules can be linked at the backend, and operators can, for example, automatically send more shared vehicles to a train station when the train has more passengers than usual, or tell the shared vehicles to wait for a train that is running late.
Managing urban congestion and mobility comes down to the matter of managing space. Cities are characterized by defined and restricted residential, commercial, and transportation spaces. Private autos are the most inefficient use of transportation space, and mass transit represents the most efficient use of transportation space. Getting more people out of private cars, and into shared feeder routes to and from mass transit modes is the most promising way to reduce auto traffic. Computer models show that it can be done, and we don’t need autonomous vehicles to realize the benefits of shared mobility.
Planning for Arts and Culture in San Diego
The role of government, and the planning community, is perhaps to facilitate these kinds of partnerships and make it easier for serendipity to occur. While many cities mandate a portion of the development budget toward art, this will not necessarily result in an ongoing benefit to the arts community as in most cases the budget is used for public art projects versus creating opportunities for cultural programming.
Rather than relying solely on this mandate, planners might want to consider educating developers with examples and case studies about the myriad ways that artists can participate in the development process. Likewise, outreach and education for the arts community about what role they can play in projects may stimulate a dialogue that can yield great results. In this sense, the planning community can be an invaluable translator in helping all parties to discover a richer, more inspiring, common language.
0 Comments