Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Dinner

I have been invited to give the keynote talk at the annual dinner of the Greater Manchester (NH) Chamber of Commerce the evening of Tuesday February 10.  Check out the Chamber's web site at http://gmccdinner.com for more information.

Many business leaders in the Greater Manchester area are interested in knowing more about sustainability and sustainable cities, and have a particular interest in knowing what the business community can do to contribute to making the area more sustainable.  The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, to its credit, has decided to spearhead the effort to think strategically about this, and I hope my presentation will help in this process.

I have also agreed to do a small morning breakfast workshop the next day to work with any business leaders, local public officials, community leaders, or others who would like to get a little more detail.

Top Mayors for Sustainability

In case you haven't checked out the "Our Green Cities" web site lately, we added six mayors to the list of "America's Top Mayors for Sustainability."  Congratulations to these mayors -- David Palmer of Trenton, NJ, Chris Coleman of St. Paul, MN, Dave Cieslewicz of Madison WI, Ralph Becker of Salt Lake City, Joe Curtatone of Somerville, MA, and John Marks of Tallahassee, FL.  Each of these mayors has made the pursuit of sustainability a high priority, and has served as a strong voice in support of programs and policies to achieve greater sustainability. 

Building plug-in hybrid recharging infrastructure

For those of you in the New York City area, I see that the New York Academy of Sciences is sponsoring a talk by a number of people on how the City can contribute to building an infrastructure to support all the new plug-in gas/electric hybrid vehicles that are going to hit the market very soon, starting with the Prius, and followed by many others.  The talk, entitled "Powering up Cities for Plug-in Hybrids" will be held on January 21 at 6 pm, and requires registration. I highly recommend this to anyone who can attend. Wouldn't it be nice to see a little of that federal funding for infrastructure made available for modest efforts like this?  This would certainly be consistent with President Obama's stated goal of contributing to building a green economy. 

Director of Sustainability in Fayetteville

Check out the article about the Director of Sustainability in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Very nice article "Mr. Sustainability" by Ellen Perlman in governing.com provides a glimpse into the inner workings of how sustainability programs and policies are often implemented.  In this case, the article helps to show how the economics of sustainability work.  For those who think that sustainability always costs more, this article is a must-read.