Green Options

When municipalities look to cut costs, some of the first programs that get chopped are green programs. But, is that such a good idea? Municipal green programs can have significant economic benefits in addition to their environmental bona fides.

Growing food in your own backyard is hardly a new concept, nor is utilizing any open space available if you live in the city, but turning your rooftop into a garden?  Well that idea has caught on in cities throughout the world, and now is starting to gain a foothold in the United States as well.

Rooftop gardens are by no means new.  Forward thinking, environmentally conscious, or penurious city dwellers have been doing it for as long as there have been city dwellers.  But recently the rooftop garden movement has started to gain some traction, inspired by the environmental benefit of more green space in a city (it reduces the “heat island” effect), and the appeal of home grown organic veggies just steps away have given the movement some serious traction.

Large metropolises across North America - including New York City, Washington DC, and Chicago have also sweetened the deal by offering tax incentives and subsidies to encourage green rooftops, and Toronto, Canada also has a new law requiring buildings of a certain size to have a green roof.  Though the Green Roof Bylaw in Toronto has garnered some criticism (mostly from developers) it has been well received by residents in the city as a means to increase the amount of green space, offset their carbon emissions, and generally to be a greener city.

Despite vocal opposition from the city’s developers and media, Toronto’s Planning Committee has recommended expanding the controversial green roof by-law to make it even more inclusive than before.

The GreenRoofs.org “Green Roofs for Healthy Cities”  Conference is on the horizon in Atlanta this coming June 2009! It is just ideal for:

• those interested in creating Green Roofs.
• studying the future of Vertical Gardens/Green Walls.
• raising awareness for green roofs and living walls (vertical gardens).
• engineers, architects, landscape architects, landscape designers,  property managers, developers, roofing contractors, and students.
• anyone interested who wants a 2-day crash course in green roofs and all the beautiful benefits they bring to cities.
• creative city gardeners of all sorts.

“Green roofs are an important component of green infrastructure. They provide valuable public benefits related to stormwater management, reduction of the urban heat island, improvement of air quality (including removal of particulate matter), and general improvement of the quality of life in communities.”  ~GreenRoofs.org

North of the border a controversy is starting to gain steam in the nation’s largest city, Toronto. The city has proposed a by-law that would make ‘green roofs’ mandatory in most new condos and office or retail complexes.

A farmer in Milwaukee is taking the green roof to the next level. Community Growers’ founder Erik Lindberg’s rooftop garden is yeilding enough organic produce to launch a CSA.

[Photo via Community Growers CSA wiki]

It’s really more than a rooftop garden, it’s a rooftop farm! Check out this interview with the farmer, including a little tour of the garden!

Under recommendations from the UK Green Building Council, otters could return to urban rivers, bats could roost under bridges, swifts could flock to office blocks and peregrine falcons soar above cathedrals. Written by Felicity Carus and shared via the Guardian Environment Network.

What do the Westfield shopping centre, Canary Wharf and a Victorian museum have in common? They are all at the vanguard of a move to encourage biodiversity in buildings that could take on an unprecedented scale if guidelines published today are adopted.

North Carolina church goes green and holds to their traditions of cherishing the Earth. How’d they do it?

Last week news surfaced that several raccoons had been seen repeatedly in areas around the White House grounds. Humane traps have been set to capture them, and if caught, the fuzzy-looking bandits will be released in a forested area by the National Park Service.

Forget the need for economic stimulus, Barack, can you come up with a better plan for the raccoons? The Obama family is always looking for opportunities to put action behind their beliefs, so would it be better for them to send out a pro-wildlife message by letting the raccoons stay?

Toss this under the headline of innovating and challenging. Green Roof Safaris is a fairly new European company that provides access to North Americans (and Europeans presumably) to tour state of the art green roofs in Germany and Switzerland.

The founders Christine Thüring and Jörg Breuning are green roof professionals who have collaborated in the past on green roof tours in conjunction with the World Green Roof Congress.

Over at Green Building Elements, Philip Proefrock’s post Showing the Green Building Process highlights a Philadelphia couple’s blog, Building Green on Montrose. Archtitects Christopher & Emily Stromberg are renovating a South Philly row home, and they document their progress on the blog. I live outside Philadelphia, and I’m always excited when hear about another great green endeavor going on in the city.

What got me most excited about the project that the Stromberg’s are working on is that they are setting up the roof of the row home to be able to accommodate a green roof. Green roofs in a city environment have enormous environmental benefits. They do things like lower the temperature around the building, improve the air quality in the area, help with water retention and create urban wildlife habitats.