The 2009 Ohio Civic Health Symposium will be held in downtown Columbus at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium on Tuesday, November 10th. The conference will center around discussion and planning based on the 2009 Ohio Civic Health Report. Learn about key findings from National and State reports, discuss the findings of the report with elected officials and other citizens, and create a plan of action for how to increase community and political engagement across Ohio. The focus of this meeting centers on dialogue, deliberation and action plans regarding civic health in the state of Ohio.

Students, faculty, staff, community partners and elected officials passionate about citizenship and civic life are encouraged to attend.Register online or click here for more information about the conference. For questions about the event, contact Annie Miller, or Jen Gilbride-Brown.

The Center for Working Families’ Green Jobs/Green NY Statewide Stakeholders Meeting will be held on Monday, November 9th in Buffalo. In October, New York State Governor David Paterson signed the Green Jobs/Green New York Act of 2009 into law. This act represents exciting new development in a state that has already shown a strong commitment to energy efficiency and innovation.

Here’s some information about the act from the Center for Working Families:

“Green Jobs/Green Homes NY (GJ/GH NY) is a blueprint for an unprecedented statewide initiative to retrofit one million homes in five years. The program will make New York homes energy efficient, lower fossil fuel emissions, and combat climate change….This public/private initiative will be the largest residential retrofit program ever initiated: a model for the nation at a critical moment in national energy planning.”

The event should be a great way to see how New York is encouraging modern, green development in the city. The meeting will bring together non-government stakeholders to identify recommendations for program regulations and implementation.

Rehab is bringing some corners of our cities back into prosperity.  And I don’t mean the Amy Winehouse version–I’m talking about the rehabilitation of the building stock that we invested in 60, 80, or 100 years ago.

Oftentimes historic renovations seem to be the result of a nebulous culture of rehabbing, or good old-fashioned individual initiative.  But cities and states can tactically choose to embrace historic preservation as a strategy for revitalizing downtowns.  To start off our series, I’m posting some thoughts from the unofficial godfather of the current historic preservation movement, Donovan Rypkema. The bulletpoints below came from his 2007 presentation, “Sustainability, Smart Growth and Historic Preservation,” at the Historic Districts Council Annual Conference in New York.  (You can read the entire speech here.)

• Sustainable development is crucial for economic competitiveness.
• Sustainable development has more elements than just environmental responsibility.
• “Green buildings” and sustainable development are not synonyms.
• Historic preservation is, in and of itself, sustainable development.
• Development without a historic preservation component is not sustainable.

Rypkema believes that, in historic preservation lies at least a partial answer to a number of challenges.  Socially: these buildings are part of the urban fabric, our culture and what make each of our cities unique.  They also tend to be located in attractive clusters that draw urban populations.  Environmentally: tearing down an historic building to build new, no matter how “green” the new building is, is less sustainable than rehabbing the historic building.  With rehab, less waste is sent to the landfill, fewer new resources are used.  Economically:  50% of the cost of a new building is resources.  Conversely, 30% of rehab costs are spent on resources, and 70% on labor.  Rehabbing equals local job creation.  Additionally, money spent on rehab is likely to be spent within the local community, rather than on parts from a factory hundreds of miles away.

Over the remaining month, we’ll explore historic preservation strategies and how a culture of historic preservation should inform our approach to urban revitalization.

This post is a part of our November series on historic preservation, building rehab, and the triple bottom line.  Next week we’ll feature an interview with historic preservationist, Ecology of Absence blogger, and St. Louis man-about-town, Michael Allen.

Our Flickr contributer Rusche.Etsy’s photo of this violently purple van is definitely eye catching, but it’s also integral to improving the lives of many of Buffalo’s low income residents. The Massachusetts Avenue Project has been using this purple van as their Mobile Market since July of this year. The group brings organic, locally-grown, and affordable produce, to Buffalo’s low-income neighborhoods.Most of the produce is made locally and cultivated through education and resources to Buffalo’s low-income neighborhoods and beyond.

The Mobile Market program is just one of several projects that are providing “ground-up” nutrition to low income families across the midwest. Buffalo is home to several other grassroots organizations that promote community nutrition and improvements in lower-income neighborhoods. Rusche.Etsy’s other photos highlight projects by Buffalo ReUse and the local farmer’s market. All of these programs are helping to turn Buffalo from a food desert into a healthy city that utilizes urban land plots to better the community.

Thanks, Rusche.Etsy, for your cool photos of Buffalo!

The 2010 Semiannual meeting of the Great Lakes Commission and Great Lakes Days in Washington will be held on February 21st-24th, 2010. It’s far away, but this meeting should be a great opportunity to find out how the Obama administration is investing in the Great Lakes.

Here’s a bit more from the GLC:

“Promoting our Great Lakes federal policy agenda is more important than ever with the new administration in the White House and many new members of Congress. In these tough economic times, it’s important that Washington recognizes that investing in the Great Lakes means jobs and economic stimulus for our region. The Great Lakes Days events will feature dialogue on Great Lakes priorities by regional leaders and members of Congress, including Obama Administration appointees who will play a critical role in shaping Great Lakes policies in the years ahead.”

For more information, click here; to register, click here.

On Friday, November 13th, Local Future will present a conference called ‘Michigan’s Future: Energy, Economy, and the Environment.’ The conference will explore paths to a sustainable Michigan, challenges facing the state’s economy, and strategies for developing a stable, enduring future.

From Local Future:

“Four highly regarded economists explain what happened to the economy, how things may unfold in the near future, and solutions to improve and remake the economy.Twenty energy experts tackle the question of how to reduce dependence on non-renewable fuels and simultaneously increase in-state energy generation from wind, solar and biomass resources.

Themes of resilience, localism and transition are explored by leading thinkers and trainers; along with a serious look at ways to ensure a stable and secure food supply with national and local experts.Only by understanding the present situation and examining innovative solutions can effective strategies be planned and implemented to create a prosperous Future Michigan.”

To register for the conference, click here.For more information, email the conference advisory committee or click here.

The I Will Stay If… campaign lands in Cleveland on November 18.  Thanks to the Cleveland team for planning!  Details here…

Dream Operator, a.k.a. Michael Allen, submitted this very cool photo of St. Louis’s south riverfront recently. The contrast between the actual view from the river and the artist’s rendering of the structures is particularly interesting; instead of the blue sky you see above, the graffitied structures are set against a grey backdrop with bleak buildings in the background.

There doesn’t seem to be much besides dreary industrial buildings in the artist’s depiction of the city, but new, innovative programs in the city are helping St. Louis become modern, greener, and more vibrant. The New Roots Urban Farm Program has brought fresh, chemical-free produce to the lower-income residents of St. Louis, increasing their health and quality of life. Revitalize St. Louis is rejuvenating the city’s physical landscape by preserving historic buildings and restoring neighborhoods.The MetroLink, St. Louis’s light rail system, has revolutionized how St. Louis’s residents get around their city.

These changes have been brightening St. Louis and making the city and even more exciting Midwestern city to live in, work in, or visit. The projects that dedicated St. Louis residents have undertaken have made St. Louis less of what the artist has shown in Michael’s picture, and more like his photo on the right, where the city is green, well-preserved, and inviting.

Cleveland took a huge step this month in solidifying sustainability as a major organizing force for change. First, Mayor Jackson promoted sustainability program director Andrew Watterson to a cabinet-level position. Second, vacant land took on new meaning as an asset when the Cleveland Foundation awarded $250,000 to three urban sustainability groups for their proposal to implement their very innovative Shrinking Cities plan.

Parkworks, The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative and Neighborhood Progress, Inc. will hire designers to identify specific parcels where green infrastructure, renewable energy and urban agriculture make sense. It will be the first large-scale implementation of this kind…anywhere. Right here in Cleveland. How did it happen? Certainly not overnight.

Chris Warren, the city’s regional development director, credits the Reimagine a More Sustainable Cleveland study (pdf) funded by Surdna Foundation. The ‘ReImagine’ study made a strong argument for seeing land through the lens of sustainability as a new model of economic development for Rust Belt cities blessed and cursed with vacancy.

A dozen or so ideas that NPI solicited from the community are about to be funded with city-directed $500,000 in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds. But Warren also credits a group of his Boomer-era peers who cut their teeth as community activists agitating for change back in the 1970s when the feds were still funding their jobs through Community Development Corporations.

The 70s zeitgeist continues with a voluntary group led by Frank Ford at NPI working in concert with County Treasurer Jim Rokakis. The group has focused on the foreclosure scourge, and testified before the Ohio General Assembly on the need for enabling legislation for the Cuyahoga County Landbank—also a groundbreaking land-use tool modeled after Genessee County, Michigan. It would still be in discussion rather than in start-up and acquiring its first properties for reuse if not for Warren, Ford, Rokakis and other leaders who remembered the power of organizing.

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A group of us vacationed to Western Pennsylvania recently. We toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterwork, Falling Water, spent a day tooling around Pittsburgh, hiked in the Laurel Highlands and gorged on cable TV. I’m way impressed with what I saw in Pittsburgh. Clevelanders are lectured about how Pittsburgh turned the corner from steel to new economy earlier, and maybe that state of recognition is behind the great little revitalization of city neighborhoods like Northside. What a gem.

We hung out with the tropical birds at The National Aviary, walked and soaked up the Gothic architecture and some Asian noodles in Allegheny West, and took in the old Carnegie Library and The Warhol Museum before calling it quits at a Peruvian taqueria in the Strip District. At the Warhol we picked up a comic book featuring Northside sites. Produced by the ToonSeum as part of something called the Charm Bracelet Project Fund, local comix artists did the whole thing. It’s real cool.

The fifth annual Michigan Clean Water Corps conference will be held on October 26th and 27th in Higgins Lake, Michigan. The conference will showcase the conservation work MiCorps volunteers are doing for Michigan’s lakes and streams.

Here’s some more from MiCorps:

“The conference will include presentations and training from regional experts, MiCorps staff and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Optional training for volunteers will take place on Monday, October 26th, which is free of charge. The full conference program will take place on Tuesday, October 27th.

The conference is intended for volunteer monitoring program leaders, citizen volunteers, water resource professionals, and others interested in the health and protection of Michigan’s rivers, lakes and streams.”

For a full itinerary of the conference, click here. To register for the conference, click here.