Although the end of sprawl will require painful changes, it will also provide a badly needed opportunity to take stock of the car-dependent, privatized society that has evolved over the past 60 years and to begin imagining different ways of living and governing. We may discover that it's not so bad living closer to work, in transit- and pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighborhoods where we run into friends and neighbors as we walk to the store, school or the office. We may even find that we don't miss our cars and commutes, and the culture they created, nearly as much as we feared we would.
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Issues of vacancy, abandonment and foreclosure have had a profound effect on the well-being of the nation's neighborhoods and residents. These negative forces have mobilized community development professionals and policymakers in Cleveland to develop innovative efforts to turn the tide and fight for our neighborhoods.
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Preservation effort gains momentum
- Marc Lefkowitz's blog
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If preserving historically significant architecture is the very definition of sustainability, it can also be a long and winding road. Such is the case for adaptively reusing the Marcel Breuer-designed Ameritrust Tower.
A small group of thoughtful people continue to make the case that the county will save millions of dollars while reducing its budget deficit, diverting tons of materials from the landfill and preserving an important piece of our national building heritage.
They may have turned the tide as recent reports indicate the county is in conversation with two developers interested in taking the tower and making something of it.
Read a brief history of this preservation effort, including letters from influential art and architecture professionals, and GreenCityBlueLake’s appeal to the National Trust for Historic Preservation which lead to the Trust sending a letter this week calling for the county to “investigate this possibility to save the building from the landfill through sale to a preservation-sensitive developer committed to saving both the Rotunda and the Ameritrust Tower.”
This site is inspired by the memory of Richard Shatten, a former board member of EcoCity Cleveland,
who pushed Northeast Ohio to think strategically about regionalism and sustainability.
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conservation/preservation
Susan Miller Says:This article, Sustaining the Past /Guidelines For Historic Preservation Shouldn’t Have To Clash With Leed Requirements, Since Preservation And Sustainability Share Many Similar Goals" in GreenSource a publication of the USGBC addresses the topic succinctly.
Do our Cleveland Restoration Society and Green Building Coalition meet regularly to discuss these issues? It seems the topic is pretty hot in other cities, too. Maybe we need subcommittees to collaborate on this topic. Maybe they are already in place. Does anyone know?
Obviously, greening existing buildings represents a huge opportunity for conservation of resources. What a huge waste it might be to lose the buildings on the hit list for the innerbelt project for instance. Given the climate change predictions, does it make sense to be building more roads? Or should we reconsider this plan and slow traffic, provide more public transit infrastructure and improve the roads we have, protect historic structures and retrofit them in a greener manner?
Reduce, reuse, recycle -- Richard Stuebi in a talk last summer at CWRU indicated that conservation of resources was the low hanging fruit of energy management and carbon footprint control. What can we conserve by retaining our historical built environment? Does it make sense to tear down buildings and waste their energy while discussing building wind turbines on the lake?
We will have to open our minds to solve this climate crisis. Let us leave no stone unturned.
Center for natural tech & design
Marc Lefkowitz Says:How cool would it be to create a Center for Natural Technology & Design (maybe as a co-tenant in the county's plans for a convention center and medical mart. Or in an adaptive reuse of the Breuer Tower. Or CIA's Gund Building, which they're planning to tear down). It could include a magnet school for the entire Northeast Ohio area focused on curricula in Natural Capitalism (business) and Biomimicry (design + biology).