Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Tufts Tisch College and US Conference of Mayors Forum

On April 28, 2008, the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts is hosting a policy forum on "Urban Issues in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign" with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.  The Forum will be moderated by Tom Cochran, the US Conference's Executive Director, and the panel will include a number of high-profile mayors, including Douglas Palmer, the current President of the U.S. Conference, from Trenton NJ, who is rapidly becoming a leader on sustainable cities and climate change in cities.   The forum provides an ideal opportunity for discussion of how and in what ways environmental, sustainability, and smart growth policies need to be both part of the presidential debate and on the agenda for the next presidential administration.  I have been astonished that so little discussion of urban issues has emerged from this presidential campaign.  There seems to be absolutely no recognition on the part of any of the candidates that so many cities are doing so many important, impactful things with respect to the pursuit of sustainability. There is also no recognition that there are many things that need to happen in Washington to facilitate cities' efforts.  I'm hoping that this forum will spend some time developing some of these ideas so that they can make their way into the campaign. 

Climate Protection Reaches Tallahassee

I see that in March of 2008 the City of Tallahassee, capital of Florida, and Leon County, held a Climate Action Summit conference with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) on promoting the city's efforts to address climate protection.  I feel like I have a special interest in this largely because I went to grad school in Political Science at FSU in Tallahassee. So I'd love to see the city, county, and the two major universities there, make strides toward becoming more sustainable.  Read the Tallahassee Democrat story on the Summit.

The Summit was moderated by Wayne Tedder of Tallahassee's Planning Department, and included talks by Jill Buck, founder of the National Go Green Initiative and Robert Deyle from FSU's terrific urban and regional planning department.  Click here for a link to the to the FSU Urban and Regional Planning Department.

I know the state of Florida has tried a number of different statewide programs and policies designed to try to get cities and towns to move toward becoming more sustainable, and that for the most part, the results have been disappointing.  A small number of cities in Florida -- perhaps most notably Tampa and St. Pete, Orlando, and Jacksonville, have done work to create such city and metro programs, but by my assessment, they haven't gotten very far.  There was a recent article in one of FSU's research publications on how the state's growth management strategies and policies have been largely ineffective over the last 20 years. See the Pain in Paradise story.

The City of Tallahassee has already done a wide array of important sustainability-oriented projects and programs, including green building, aggressively pursuing alternative energy (especially solar) and energy efficiency, and a greenways program, and many others.

I'm hoping that Tallahassee can turn out to be a state leader on these issues, and I know there are lots of people who share that hope with me. 

Atlantic Magazine Article About the Clinton Foundation and Sustainable Cities

One of my former students, Sara Greenbaum, who works for the Clinton Foundation, pointed me to a recent issue of Atlantic monthly magazine that has a great story about the Foundation.  The story is called "This is Not Charity?" by Jonathan Roush (October 2007), and describes a fairly new way of thinking about the intervention of the nonprofit or NGO sector in affecting market forces (see www.theatlantic.com).  To put it succinctly, the philosophy is about finding ways of aggregating otherwise dispersed or under-developed demand for what Bill Clinton calls "social goods and services" that can and would be provided by the private sector. Since one of the major social goods areas that the foundation is interested in is climate change, it has gotten involved in the sustainable cities and climate change activities of specific cities (see my May 17, 2007 posting for more information about this). 

Read the article and let me know what you think about the prospects for defining a broad sustainable cities strategy around this type of philosophy.  Where could it work?  Where would it have difficulty?  Are there areas where governments would have to play a significant or even a lead role?  This is a discussion whose time has come.

Clinton Foundation Supports Green Cities

Congratulations to the Clinton Foundation and its Clinton Climate Initiative chair, Ira Magaziner, for the new initiative to support carbon reduction in 15 cities around the world.

The US cities include New York, Chicago, and Houston. Outside of the US, they include Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Rome, Karachi, Seoul, Bangkok, Melbourne, Sao Paulo, and Johannesburg.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-05-16-climate-summit_N.htm?POE=click-refer

This is an exciting new development in the world of sustainable cities. The Clinton Foundation has apparently leveraged over a $1 billion to help cities ensure that their own city government buildings are energy efficient.  Many people have been talking about the importance of cities for redressing climate change problems, and this represents a huge step toward providing the resources and know-how to make cities the cornerstone of reductions in carbon emissions. Some of the selected cities have been at this for some time -- New York City under Mayor Bloomberg has had a very impressive green building program for its municipal buildings for several years. So have Chicago and Toronto. This new program should be able to demonstrate how far cities can go, and from my perspective, will make it possible for serious analysis of the true financial and environmental impacts of such efforts.