Intro essay on urban food production from GRIST

"Few things scream 'Hipster' like an apartment garden." Thus spake the New York City music magazine Death + Taxes, and it's easy to see why. In trendy neighborhoods from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to San Francisco's Mission district, urban youth are nurturing vegetables in window sills, fire escapes, and roofs. Down on the street, they tend flourishing garden plots, often including chickens and bees. Even Grist has launched a comic strip (left) devoted to the exploits of urban-hipster homesteaders.

But growing food in the city isn't just the province of privileged youth -- in fact, the recent craze for urban agriculture started in decidedly unhip neighborhoods. Nor is it anything new. As I'll show in this rambling-garden-walk of an essay, urban agriculture likely dates to the birth of cities. And its revival might just be the key to sustainable cities of the future.

Going Green, Without Being Preachy About It

We should bring this guy to Brooklyn College--his restaurant is down the road in Ft Greene, fascinating case both from environmental standpoint and business ethics framework: annoys the neighbors, wage disputes, but the kids love him!

With a white Kangol cap tipped on his shaved head just so on a recent swampy morning, Sean Meenan led a group of girls, ages 11 to 14, around the cobalt blue, lime green and Sunkist orange outdoor patio of Habana Outpost, the ecologically conscious restaurant he owns in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

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Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Owned by Sean Meenan, the Habana Outpost is among the leaders in New York’s growing collection of eco-restaurants.

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Ruby Washington/The New York Times

The environmentally conscious restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is open from Earth Day until Halloween and boasts solar panels that funnel excess electricity to buildings nearby.

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Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Signs list the Outpost’s environmental bona fides.

He showed off the solar panels, a rainwater-collection system that feeds the toilets, a recycling and composting station, wheat-board wall paneling and corn-based plastic cups. There was even a blender powered by a bicycle.

He showed off the solar panels, a rainwater-collection system that feedsthe toilets, a recycling and composting station, wheat-board wall paneling and corn-based plastic cups. There was even a blender powered

by a bicycle.

Urban Universities Rennaissance Act

So the below is directly connected to a workshop we did at the US Social Forum in Detroit on the role of the university in promoting democratic and sustainable local economic development--the democracy collaborativ at the Univ of Maryland was involved with the below and with our panel (thru Steve Dubb).  Also note that Portland State was a college that various faculty from Brooklyn College visited last year to learn more about their community partnerships and place based learning efforts.  mm

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today Congressman David Wu announced the introduction of the Urban University Renaissance Act of the 21st Century, which will benefit universities across the country that are located in major urban centers, as well as their local communities.

“While we face many challenges in Oregon and around the nation, none is more urgent right now than the recovery of our economy and getting people back to work,” said Congressman Wu.  “Urban universities can serve as the heart of economic renewal by sharing their skills and resources with the communities that surround them.  My legislation will help urban universities, like Portland State University, as they lead communities, revitalize neighborhoods, and attract businesses and services to urban areas.”

In addition to educating students and preparing the next generation to become leaders in their chosen fields, urban universities work off campus to raise the quality of life for everyone in the local community.

"This bill acknowledges and encourages the core mission of urban universities, to build sustainable communities,” said Portland State University President Wim Wiewel.  “Congressman Wu understands that it is only by supporting partnerships with local businesses, nonprofits, and K-12 that universities like Portland State can achieve their mission."

Congressman Wu’s legislation recognizes the multi-faceted role that urban universities play and includes sections that focus on education, health care, innovation, and housing, among other provisions.  Highlights of the legislation include:

• Helping more teachers learn the specific skills needed to successfully teach in urban environments, ultimately helping our cities have more—and more qualified—educators.
• Encouraging urban universities to work alongside mayors, superintendents, and business leaders in their cities and regions to ensure that high school graduation requirements are better aligned with college and workforce expectations—making urban youth better prepared for college and a career. 
• Revitalizing the core of our urban universities by reestablishing a program in the Higher Education Act to support the varied beneficial work of urban schools.
• Supporting university research on environmental issues in low-income neighborhoods.
• Providing for public health research to reduce health disparities and improve care.
• Helping urban universities provide assistance to local nonprofits committed to community development and affordable housing, strengthening existing programs to make them more effective locally.
• Strengthening innovation policies to promote partnerships that create regional economic growth.
  

"We are always looking for opportunities to improve our communities by partnering with local organizations—local and regional government, community-based organizations, and business organizations,” said Sheila Martin, director of Portland State University’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies.  “This federal commitment to support university partnerships will help us to align those efforts and move more quickly toward a healthier, more prosperous metropolitan region.”

By laying out a comprehensive vision for expanding, improving, and acting upon the needs of our urban centers, Congressman Wu’s legislation provides a roadmap for how urban universities can help strengthen our communities as we emerge from the current economic downturn, all while becoming stronger themselves.  

"Urban areas face many challenges and opportunities unique to cities,” said Nancy Zimpher, chair of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities and chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY).  “Urban universities are distinctly positioned with a broad range of skills and resources—intellectual, human, technological, and social—to engage in these issues.  This federal investment in urban universities will scale up innovative efforts around education, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, and health to provide a greater national impact on strengthening metropolitan prosperity."   

Congressman Wu will introduce the Urban University Renaissance Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.  Full text of the bill will be available from the Library of Congress at thomas.gov shortly afterward.

pretty Green and truly Affordable!?

"when only 10 percent of New Yorkers making $35,000 or below have housing that qualifies as affordable — that is, equal to 30 percent or less of their income — it kind of puts the green roof tax credit (which we obviously care about a lot!) in bleak perspective"

There are a lot of very interesting green buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn — and also in the Hamptons and Jersey and anywhere else that feels left out — and we don’t mean to make it seem like there aren’t. But if it seems like we’ve been covering the South Bronx a lot at gbNYC recently, that’s because… well, because we have, but also because exciting new green things keep popping up in the Boogie Down, from the South Bronx Greenway to the LEED Platinum-hopeful Haven Academy School to, today, the opening of The Brook, Common Ground’s new, LEED-certified affordable housing development at Brook Avenue and 148th Street. The Brook’s opening is good news for green building heads because The Brook, which was designed by Alexander Gorlin Architects, offers an impressive suite of green design elements, from a green roof to a high-efficiency boiler. But it’s especially heartening, for all New Yorkers, because true affordable housing has become increasingly difficult to find in New York City. The Brook is certainly affordable housing in its classic sense — as opposed to mandated-by-the-city-if-you-want-to-build-that-luxury-condo — with 120 of the 190 units in the building tabbed for formerly homeless families and the remaining 70 slated for low-income South Bronx singles. But as impressive as The Brook’s marriage of green building form and socially responsible function is — and it’s impressive — the building’s arrival on the scene at this moment in time is perhaps the biggest story, here.

As the price gap closes between building green and building brown, there’s increasingly no reason why a project like The Brook, which was funded (in part) by taxpayer dollars, shouldn’t be built green. But… okay, detour here, but I kind of got into it in the comments section of this Real Deal post on The Brook with a trollish why-are-my-tax-dollars-coddling-these-lucky-homeless-people goof. Which is stupid of me, obviously, because that is literally never worth it, but which was animated by something more than my natural animus towards hate-the-poor paleocon types. Because a structure like The Brook is built to last, there’s no reason in the world why it shouldn’t have every green building efficiency measure built into it that’s possible. That it doesn’t cost appreciably more to build green than not is good news for those of us who care about the future of green building in New York City and elsewhere, and makes the decision to build green that much easier. But if the poor are always to be with us, as someone who cared a lot about this sort of thing once said, then it makes sense to build low-income housing that will be with us for a long time as well. In short, it’s not an extravagance for Common Ground to spend taxpayer dollars on green low-income housing — it’s a totally justifiable and logical efficiency measure that, along with all the other cost benefits of Common Ground-style “supportive housing” over basic homeless shelters, will be paying dividends for decades to come. That is, dividends both for the families living at The Brook and for all New Yorkers with consciences, and both in terms of money saved and in terms of all the other, more important things inherent in any conversation about this sort of thing.

Putting the 'Public' in 'Public Intellectual'

this article is not about sustainability as such but gets into a crucial related issue: how might academics connect themselves to political issues in various communities.  great piece, too short tho, would love to hear more from her perspective.  BC, btw, has many community partnerships."

I entered graduate school in the mid-1990s, a period marked by the rise of the black public intellectual: Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and a host of other prominent scholars who became household names. Suddenly newspapers, popular magazines, and even television shows featured black intellectuals. The reaction was bifurcated. Some celebrated this development as an opportunity to elevate the discourse on social policy, especially on issues of race. But there were also complaints that this new crop of intellectuals talked too much and did too little. And some felt that by talking so much to the public, the black intellectuals risked diminishing their scholarly legitimacy.

At the time, the conversations among black students at elite graduate programs were framed around whether to become public intellectuals. But did we have the charisma or conversational skills to do this kind of work? Such a question was rarely raised. Instead we debated what kind of intellectual we wanted to be: one who sat in the ivory tower? Or one who talked to the people? There was a general skepticism that both roles could be successfully played simultaneously.