Green Streets for Sustainable Communities
Update: This event has been rescheduled to 3 on-line sessions, all from 9 am – 12 noon with optional networking at 8:30 am
Day 1 – Vision and Economics (Thursday, September 10, 2020)
Day 2 – Case Studies (Friday, September 25, 2020)
Day 3 – Funding Strategies (Thursday, October 8, 2020)
Green streets provide a “roadmap” to our community, ecosystem, and economic future. It’s time to apply holistic, creative design eyes to our street system, our most important public assets and land, right under our feet in the middle of our cities. Public streets and their right of way convey and distribute to each home and destination:
- people in cars, transit, bikes, scooters and shoes
- goods and emergency services via truck and other vehicles
- energy and data: electricity, gas, fiber optics
- water – wastewater, stormwater, drinking water
- soil, tree canopy, nature-based infrastructure
This Green Streets Symposium is for a mix of city council members and other local elected officials, city staff leaders, stormwater experts, complete street/transportation experts, citizen and environmental activists, public and private utilities, arborists and tree experts, ground water and urban ecology experts; and sustainability and real estate leaders for companies and other institutions.
Organizer: Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities or TCSC (http://transportchoice.org).
Sponsoring Organizations Include: City of Mountain View, City of Palo Alto, Valley Water, Google, Valley Water and SCVURPPP, County of Santa Clara
Vision: Urban areas of the Bay Area are fully integrated into a “no net impact” system with the larger natural environment. This includes an integrated water system that follows the call to “slow it, spread it, sink it” and brings together the planning for storm water drainage, drought concerns, and flood prevention. No net climate change emissions means we reduce single occupancy vehicle use and promote walking, biking, transit or other shared low- or zero emission vehicles. Human-caused emissions are offset by a rich canopy of trees, grasslands, and chaparral in our open spaces surrounding the urban area and integrated throughout our urban areas – gardens but also greening our infrastructure especially our street grids. Air flows are slowed and softened by trees canopies, our soil systems are protected by and enriched with natural compost.
Desired Outcomes: Participants will (a) learn from experts and peers, (b) be empowered by a community of peers and citizens who support this vision, (c) bring this vision and set of practices to standard policies and design guidelines for their cities and organizations and, of course (d) this will lead to change “on the ground” through both plans, specifications and implementation.
Audience: Bay Area community of policy leaders (city council, county, water district etc.), technical experts (staff, consultants, agency folk), neighborhood and environmental advocates (non-profits, neighborhood associations) 100-150 participants