How Green Is Your Game?

GUEST BLOGGERS: Serena Zhang and Rebecca Cutts. Our two summer interns have activated their Wonder Twin Powers to provide you with the selection below.

Your local Starbucks, in addition to being an expert at satisfying your caffeine needs, has branched out to become a leader for going green and creating sustainable changes in the world. Starbucks created the Planet Green Game in which you can explore the town of Evergreen while learning about how to conserve and protect your global resources.

You begin by choosing a character and mode of transportation which can potentially affect your overall score in the game. The goal is to visit all six key destinations, where you partake in green related mini-games and explore global solutions once you have finished the task. These global solutions show how different cities across the globe solve environmental challenges ranging from sustainable developments to climate control.

There are ten bonuses hidden throughout the city that you can find to unlock additional points and information. After you unlock every location and bonus, the game automatically ends and you can see how well you performed out of 10000 points.

It is a fun and interactive way to discover ways to help the environment!

Try it out and tell us what you think!
http://www.planetgreengame.com/game.php

I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know

GUEST BLOGGER: Rebecca Cutts, Rising Senior at Emory’s Business School and Fifty Forward Summer Intern

My heart is with non-profit organizations. A cut throat corporate world is not for me.

This is why the Atlanta Regional Commission seemed like the perfect place for me to stretch my legs and become familiar with how non-profits work.

I began interning with the Fifty Forward Program thinking it would be a great way to gain work experience; learn how things work in the real world. Little did I know I would be learning how to make sustainable choices and think beyond my 5 year plan after college.

Before learning the facts, there was a lazy quality to my efforts in making smart choices when it came to the environment. I did have some good habits already instilled before coming to work for ARC. Like recycling, I recycle all my plastics and instead of taking the 12 minute shuttle ride to class I always opted to take the 15 minute walk.

Since coming to work for the ARC on the Fifty Forward Program, I have researched and learned about sustainability, land use, and energy efficiency among many other topics. I began to realize the effect each individual has on the environment. I knew I had to change my wasteful habits, like not shutting my computer off before I go to bed, driving to get the mail, leaving my phone charger plugged in, leaving on random lights not in use, and cutting down on my liberal paper towel use.

Now, I make more of an effort: I drink tap water out of reusable cups, I bring my own coffee mug to work, and I take my own bags to the grocery store and reuse the plastic bags as trash bags. I try to educate my family on the issues. Sure these are just baby steps, but if we all take baby steps…imagine how far we could get.

Become part of the conversation. Educate yourself on the issues and tell us what you think people can do to cut down on waste, not just trash but wasted energy, time, gas, and space.

Up On The Roof

GUEST BLOGGER: Serena Zhang, Rising High School Senior and Fifty Forward Summer Intern

I, like most people, have been grudgingly complaining about oil prices. However, let us not forget that as human population increases, space is also becoming a pricier and more prized commodity. At a time when our earth is straining to support 6.7 billion of us, we cannot sacrifice green space at the expense of building new infrastructure.

My solution? Use roofs. Roofs, for the most part, have been flat, lifeless blocks-screaming to be filled…with something! We could install solar panels for using sunlight more efficiently or plant a little garden there, where the grass and flowers will have optimal sun.

My vision entails a whole neighborhood park at the top of a residential building! The elevator can easily bring residents to this new “top floor”, where protective shields ensure the inhabitants’ safety. Below the roof surface, soil-encased cells will not only support plant growth, but will also allow extra rainwater to seep down to the storm water storage compartment. The stored water can be then filtered into drinking water or can be used to replenish the soil in times of drought.

In my vision, I hope that developers will not have to choose infrastructure over sustaining greenspace, or vice versa. This is my hope for the future: what is yours?

-Serena

 

Where Did The Sidewalk Go?

GUEST BLOGGER: Serena Zhang, Fifty Forward Summer Intern and Rising High School Senior

 

Have you ever been stranded at the edge of a sidewalk–looking into the hopeless jungle of uneven grass, potholes, potentially fatal anthills, and ruthless intersections between you and the next stretch of sidewalk?

Though the Atlanta region should ultimately aim to increase the total mileage of sidewalks in general, I believe planners should concentrate on connecting existing sidewalks first. It’s not that sidewalks do not exist, it’s their lack of accessibility that prevents them from becoming more successful. I believe developers will aid pedestrians more by forming networks through bridging individual stretches than by creating a new piece of sidewalk safely tucked away from public use.

If more people use sidewalks, maybe the use will spread. Hopefully, it will be contagious.

 

Letting Go of the Snickers Bar

GUEST BLOGGER: Kathryn Lawler, Aging Services Consultant

I am a person of patterns. I eat the same thing for breakfast. Look in my closet. You’ll see I buy the same 3 colors year after year. Sometimes this is good, like when my intermittent morning jog turned into an almost daily routine. Other times it’s not so good like when my periodic mid-afternoon chocolate break quickly morphed into a mandatory 3 pm candy bar. For better or worse, only major events interrupt my patterns- my favorite blue suddenly falling out of style; the vending machine at work ceasing to stock Snickers.

Because I am not alone in my need for patterns, habits and schedules, it’s not such a hard thing to confess. In fact as a region, our habits are more than patterns, they are codified into local policy. These rules shape the way we live, work, play, eat, exercise, relax and get around. Some things make life easier. Some make life more difficult. Some like my Snickers bar are good right now, but not so good in the long run.

Whether we’re ready or not a big change is already in progress and it calls into question just about all of our local patterns and policies. Our population is about to radically shift. We will soon be a region of over 6 million people. More households will be childless. More people will be over the age of 60 and at the same time we’ll have more school children than ever before. The region will be home to cultures, languages, art, ideas, food and expertise from around the globe.

All of this change brings with it a lot of uncertainty and who likes that? We can however assert some control. We get to decide-are we going to re-imagine our future and seize the opportunity to change what we don’t like? Are we going to maximize the best of what’s ahead? Or are we going to cling to our old habits comfortable in both the good and bad that we know?

Regardless of what we chose, in the decades to come when the predicted trends have become the new reality, the leaders of today will get the blame or the credit. We have the imagination and the expertise. We just need the will power and perhaps the courage to leave our old Snickers habits behind.

(Not) Living Together

In his book “The Big Sort,” journalist Bill Bishop takes a look at how Americans have sorted themselves out over the last 30 years. It’s not a red-state/blue-state division. The sorting that he’s looking at is taking place at the neighborhood level. Bishop’s thesis is that affluence and mobility have made it possible for us to live pretty much anywhere we want. Increasingly, he suggests, we are choosing to live in neighborhoods of like-minded people. “Given a choice,” he writes, “people will choose to read, be among, watch, live with, worship with, vote with, people who are like themselves.”

This sorting out is accelerated by the Internet. About eight million people log on to political blogs or partisan web journals every day, creating virtual communities of like-minded individuals who hear only from others who think like they do. Thus, we rarely find ourselves in spaces where we have conversations with people who don’t share our world view.

As we prepare for a much more culturally diverse metro region, what will we need to do to create those spaces where conversations among people of differing views can occur?

What new institutions and organizations we need to work across cultural boundaries to address regional challenges?

Feeling the Squeeze

OK, stop us if you’ve heard this before- we’re getting older. Sound familiar? Of course it does.

 

For years we’ve heard and read about the impending retirement of the 75 million or so boomers. Volumes upon volumes have been written about how this fundamental demographic shift will affect our communities. And, really, this is a dramatic change.

 

The bulk of community planning for the past few decades has been geared to the working age classes and their children because, simply, they constituted the vast majority of the total population. This will no longer be the case, so the fundamental planning assumptions must change. And they will.

 

Concomitant with the aging of the population is the squeezing of the working age population, meaning that there will be fewer workers to support a growing “dependent” population. So not only do we need to rethink who our communities are designed for, we also need to think about the workforce of the future.

 

How can we continue to support traditional safety net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security if there are going to be fewer workers contributing to these programs and more people drawing from them?  

 

A lot of political capital is being spent on being the toughest on immigration, but given the coming trends, is immigration, including those here illegally, a solution?

Making Green from Working Green

GUEST BLOGGER: Lee J. Harrop LEED AP, PE — Georgia State University MBA Student, Program Management Officer Atlanta BeltLine Inc.

With oil prices over $130/barrel, debates in Congress about the merits of a US carbon market, and record temperatures many people are looking into “green jobs” as a way to do their part to help the environment. In fact eco-friendly jobs are booming both in Atlanta and all over the world.

 
Being green in the work place is no longer a political issue. It is a legitimate competitive strategy being actively embraced by businesses of all sizes. Rising energy and transportation costs are causing businesses to re-think the manner in which they use resources. Businesses are constantly seeking for ways to “out-green” the competition – either to gain a financial edge or to improve their corporate image.
In Atlanta we’re seeing a boom of eco-conscious real estate developments (Glenwood Green, Inman Village, Georgia Tech’s Technology Square - not to mention the Atlanta BeltLine). The State Legislature recently instituted several tax credits for clean and renewable energy (House Bill 670). Local governments are recognizing the cost benefits of sustainable operations (Atlanta’s newly launched Sustainability Initiative). And local corporate giants are also leading the way (Home Depot’s Eco Options). These efforts are a small part of the momentum building that will usher Atlanta into a greener future over the next 50-years.

 
So how can you contribute to this future – and what makes a job green? A green job doesn’t necessarily have to be a new position – it can be as simple as a re-application of an existing skill set. It can be anything from blue-collar jobs (manufacturing wind turbines or solar panels) to service-based careers (eco-friendly engineering and architecture, conducting building energy audits) to traditional white-collar positions (lawyers specializing in evolving green laws and trends, sustainability officer of a corporation). A green job can be anything that helps business or society use a little less of our collective resources.

 
There is a wealth of continuing education opportunities available for green jobs. Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business is in the process of developing a concentration in Business and Environmental Sustainability for its MBA program. The US Green Building Council and local non-profit Southface (both excellent resources) offer various training sessions and certifications. In many cases you might be able to persuade your current employer to pay for continuing education.

 
For more information, visit these online resources: GreenBiz.com, EcoJobs.com, TreeHugger.com, and G3Agency.com.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” -  Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher

 

It goes without saying, the Atlanta region is changing. The vast majority of the 20-county Atlanta region’s growth this decade has come from non-whites, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

Some 75 percent of all growth since 2000 has come from non-whites, with the African-American population adding the most, followed by Whites, Hispanics and Asians.

 

Gwinnett County led the region, adding 167,000 non-whites between 2000 and 2006. In fact, Gwinnett captured one-fourth of all the growth in non-whites. This growth includes an increase of 65,000 Hispanics (30% of all Hispanic growth) and 26,000 Asians (37% of all Asian growth).

 

These trends are expected to continue for the next 50 years and the ramifications of this shift are as exciting as they are challenging. The sheer volume of the region’s expected population growth, mixed with the new diversity this growth will bring, will create an Atlanta region that will be hard to recognize when compared to the region we live in today.

 

Multi-culturalism will likely permeate every corner of the society, including classrooms. What will the education system look like then?

 

What Is The Tie That Binds?

In “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century“, Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Robert Putnam contends that ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration and that this has definite long-term and short-term consequences for society.

It is certainly the case for metro Atlanta that we are becoming a more diverse region. In our earlier post, One New City A Year For The Next 43 Years, we point out that if current trends persist by 2050, our demographic composition could be 38% White, 27% Hispanic, 26% Black, and 9% Other by 2050.

Putnam says that in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. But in the short run, increases in ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital.

He offers new evidence from the US that suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation is rarer, and friends are fewer.

The positive side of this though is that in the long run, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities.

This concept can be very instructive for us. In a recent Regional Snapshot, we can see that non-white populations have been concentrated in certain areas of the region but that between 2000 and 2007, almost every census tract in the region experienced an increase in non-white population.

So if Putnam is correct, we’ve got some work to do to make sure that we can stick together as a cohesive population, economic, and decision making unit over the next fifty years.

Could our quest for sustainability help us in this regard? If we all have a common goal, then maybe we can find some common ground. Hopefully Fifty Forward can help us find that common ground in the form of a long-term regional vision.