Open Invite: Reinvent the Motor City

by Maggie Flickinger

Imagine walking down a city block in your hometown and realizing that just one in ten homes are occupied.  The others, once charming historic bungalows, are now overgrown, crumbling visages with nary a hint of their past lives as part of a vibrant community.  Repeat this pattern block after block.   Think a visit to downtown will reassure? There, a 35-story skyscraper sits entirely vacant, as it has since it was built – many of its neighbors have won a few tenants, but sit mostly empty.  City-wide, average residential vacancy is almost 30%, with many areas much more hard hit.

Abandoned homes on one block in East Detroit, published by Mother Jones in November 2010.

The 25 Million Dollar “Ramp”

by Nicole Delmage

The federal government has awarded Boulder County $25M for what amounts to “getting ready” to retrofit more than four hundred homes per week over the next three years.  Why do we need money to get ready?  Seems like an awful lot of preening.   Apparently, we do not have a local work force that is trained to do this many energy efficiency retrofits within this time frame.

“Ramp-up” means to make a smooth transition to some higher and more desirable place (my definition).  Being in the same family as “leg work”, “R&D”, and “reconnaissance”, it is not the ultimate goal.  The role of ramping-up is to be ready for the real goal at hand: to retrofit lots of homes very quickly using a local workforce.   How will $25M be used to ensure the real goal is met with the most effective impact on the local economy?

Bah Humbug to Earth Day!

by Maggie Flickinger

I’ve been told “Happy Earth Day” by about 30 entities today.  I say “entities” because only about 8 of these tidings came from my friends, family, and coworkers.  One sparked a discussion on how I slacked, not motivated enough to brave the spring downpours (and hail!) to ride my bike into the the studio this morning.  Another brought an observance of a jeweled ladybug navigating the remnants of that downpour across an achingly green new leaf.  Sadly, though, the majority of these “Happy Earth Day”s were glaring at me from my inbox, suffixed by “20% off today only” “free shipping on earth day” “giveaway today only!”

It seems that Earth Day, established in 1970 with the goal of being “…a national day of observance of environmental problems…” has gone the way of of capitalistic consumerism.  Perhaps as daily awareness of environmental issues is on the rise, the need for one day to focus on these issues lessens.  And perhaps that’s when marketing gurus seize the opportunity to co-opt the day for greenwashing campaigns.  I have two alternative ideas to put forth regarding my ideal version of Earth Day, both related to radical change – a jar to the system that becomes cause for pause:

First, wouldn’t it be wild to see an earth day ad campaign that said:

“Please don’t buy anything from us today.  Go outside instead!”