During the roaring 20’s, Detroit glittered as a global center of automobile manufacturing. With a population that soared from 285,000 in 1900 to 1.6 million by 1930, it was the fourth largest city in the United States. As more and more Americans clamored for cars, workers flocked to the Motor City seeking the American Dream, dark plumes of “progress” loomed over manufacturing facilities, and art deco skyscrapers dotted the skyline.  Today, the population has dipped to just shy of 706,000, about one-third of properties are vacant, and 10,000 homes are slated for demolition in 2013. To add insult to injury, climate change impacts are being felt in the Great Lakes Region. These impacts are not only adversely affecting wildlife, but are also affecting the places where people live: for example, when increased rain events exacerbate stormwater flooding and create sewage back-ups in basements and streets.

Andrew Moore, Cooper Elementary School, East Side, 2008, digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 62 x 78 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell. Credit: Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore, House on Walden Street, East Side, 2008, digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 36 x 45.5 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell. Credit: Andrew Moore

In Detroit Disassembled, Andrew Moore’s stunning large-format photographs are a nod to the style of 17th Century paintings, featuring crumbling buildings and streetscapes that are now overtaken by nature.  In one over-sized print, an abandoned elementary school is surrounded and swallowed by prairie beneath bucolic blue skies, a stark juxtaposition in a once-booming metropolis. In another photograph, birch trees are growing out of decayed tomes left behind in a former book depository. In another, foliage has literally overtaken a two-story home, covering it in green leaves.

Camilo José Vergara takes more of a retrospective approach in his exhibition, Detroit is No Dry Bones, documenting locations of the city over time, profiling the transition of the former industrial capital.  Vergara posits that Detroit’s “ruins” should be preserved, constant reminders of the Detroit’s cultural heritage and the capacity of its residents to survive in the face of adversity. Should modern ruins like the Michigan Theater, a once-grand renaissance-style building that is arguably the most beautiful parking garage in the world (cars are literally parked inside the theater’s shell, perhaps even in the spot where Sammy Davis Jr. met Frank Sinatra), remain as links to the city’s past?

Is there hope to revitalize decaying and declining urban centers, like Detroit, as they struggle to find their new identities? Of course there is, and nature can actually drive that transformation in the Motor City and elsewhere, but it requires us to be urban visionaries.

We need to take an approach that doesn’t exclusively focus on problem-fixing, but envisions the potential of our cities and towns, and recognizes that nature is critical, functional infrastructure and is just as important as buildings and roads. Instead of riding shot-gun, we need to put nature in the driver seat of our cities and towns.

Putting Nature in the Driver’s Seat

We know that nature can survive and thrive in urban areas, while benefiting the humans that live there — we just need to place a premium on our green infrastructure and be smarter about designing spaces to function in this way.

Here are some ideas:

• Establish networks of Certified Wildlife Habitats® that help restore wildlife in cities and suburbs, sequester carbon, reduce the urban heat island effect, and help manage flooding and drought.
  

  Hutchins Cole’s Garden, Rosa Parks Boulevard, Detroit, 1987 Photo © Camilo José Vergara

• Create robust urban tree canopies that provide habitat and food for wildlife, improve shade and cooling effects, and manage stormwater flooding (and reduce the urban heat island effect and air conditioning, thereby lowering GHG emissions associated with building energy use!). Climate science should inform trees species selection so that trees can survive in a changing climate.
• Transform vacant properties into wildlife gardens that grow local food, support wildlife, and provide ways for children to connect with nature.
• Restore urban streams and waterways to provide habitat for wildlife and recreation opportunities for residents. Of course, restoration projects should be designed to be “climate-smart,” meaning they can adapt to climate impacts over time.
• Enact local policies and plans that require wildlife-friendly, nature-based approaches to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

These ideas are not only relevant for communities that are re-developing and re-defining themselves due to economic downturns. Some of the same approaches can be taken in communities that are re-building and recovering from natural disasters, like those communities affected by Superstorm Sandy.

These are just a handful of ideas — learn more about climate-smart communities.

What are your ideas to make natural an integral part of our cities?
Detroit Disassembled and Detroit is No Dry Bones can be seen at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, through 17 March 2013.

Here’s a quick, fun way to get families outside this spring. Invite your neighbors for a community clean-up!

In our neighborhood, folks shared their yard tools and gave each other gardening tips, while parents and kids cleaned up trash from the nearby stream. Find out three tips to improve your community clean-up by watching my video diary:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some photos from our clean-up:

Here's all the trash we collected, including this baby stroller and styrofoam grave from Halloween - all in a nearby stream!

Daughter and father cooperate on trash pick-up

Have you organized a community clean-up in your area? What worked for you?

If you enjoy organizing community events, you might enjoy our Community Wildlife Habitat program where you encourage your neighbors to garden for wildlife.

National Wildlife Federation’s Storytelling Video Diary Series shares the candid tales of nine NWF staffers from around the country; armed with their cameras in the Great Lakes, California, South Dakota, the Pacific Northwest, Northern Virginia, and Washington, DC, these nine staffers will share with you their individual trials, epiphanies and stories as they unfold in their daily adventures.

Carla Howard and Marc Littlejohn of NWF gathered to celebrate the National Urban League's achievements and to recognize members of Congress. (Photo Credit: Mia Fields-Hall)

The summit hosted Urban League affiliate delegations comprised of CEO’s, board chairs and the presidents of affiliate Guild and Young Professional auxiliaries. Meetings on Capitol Hill with U.S. Senators and Representatives from both sides of the aisle were scheduled for each affiliate delegation. There were workshops and panel discussions focused on job creation, health care and education; as well as networking receptions and luncheons that allowed the participants to connect with both key DC decision-makers and up and coming leaders that are new to the political landscape.

The conference also served as the backdrop to the release of the National Urban League’s landmark annual publication, The State of Black America (SOBA), held this year at the historic Howard University. There was a press conference followed by a spirited town hall conversation with high profile commentators and students. Of particular importance to the Fair Climate Project was essay #3, Leveraging the Greening of America to Strengthen the Workforce Development System on page 76 and the subsequent  case study on the Green Impact Zone of Kansas City, MO.

National Urban League president Marc Morial highlighted the fact that the work of the Urban League movement is more important than ever and that urban America needs to be put back to work. The recession has disproportionately burdened urban America and communities of color and that solutions should be targeted to where the need is greatest.

Transportation options are an important part of smart growth (photo credit: Flickr/faceless b)

The 10th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference (www.newpartners.org) held in Charlotte in February was a testament to the importance and urgency of placing equity and inclusion at the center of the movement to create sustainable communities. This was evidenced by the commitments made by numerous federal officials, the range of issues discussed in conference sessions, and the greater diversity among the more than 1,300 participants compared to previous conferences. Participants flocked to 110 concurrent sessions to learn from experts and each other about building sustainable communities – communities that are safe, healthy, and livable.

There was a day-long pre-conference workshop to discuss equitable development at the intersection of environmental justice and smart growth. Environmental justice advocacy is a response to the disproportionate impacts of not only pollution but also development patterns on low-income people and people of color. Participants examined transportation, housing, brownfield remediation, community health and other issue areas to see how future development strategies could overcome— rather than exacerbate— these differences.   This session focused on capacity building within neighborhood and community-based organizations to engage on growth and development issues in their neighborhoods, communities and regions.  Participants learned about federal, state, local and tribal tools and programs that support equitable development; heard from community leaders who have forged successful partnerships; learned about opportunities for collaboration between smart growth, equitable development and environmental justice; explored why integrating these efforts is critical and necessary to right past wrongs, could revitalize America’s disadvantaged communities, grow the economy, and create healthy and sustainable urban, suburban, rural and tribal communities; and finally learned about tools and strategies to help finance equitable development.

This year’s conference placed increased emphasis on Environmental and Social Justice, with both a conference track dedicated to “Equitable Development” and incorporation of those issues into many of the conference’s other sessions. Catchy buzz words and intriguing topic names abounded in the conference program:  “Equity Toolkit”, “Just and Smart Growth”, “Ports, Goods Movement, and Environmental Justice”, “Climate Justice”, “Inclusive Engagement”, and “Degrees of Disadvantage”.

Degrees of Disadvantage (“DoD”) is the term coined by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission for the index they use to compare individual census tracts’ concentration of transportation-disadvantaged populations with the regional average.  The index includes eight such disadvantaged populations:  the elderly (75+), the physically-disabled, car-less households, low-income households, female head-of-households with children, limited English-proficiency persons, Hispanic/Latino persons, and non-Hispanic minorities.  The Commission uses DoD maps to evaluate proposed transportation projects’ contribution to improving mobility and transportation access for these populations. The Local Government Commission is currently working on converting all of the PowerPoint presentations to pdf files, which will be posted on the conference website in two weeks.

Talk of energy cost savings and greenhouse gas reduction was everywhere, from LEED and other green building approaches, to energy performance audits conducted by volunteer retired engineers.

For the conference-goers it seemed that smart growth and sustainable communities are not  novel theories: they have moved into the mainstream of accepted “best practices.”  No longer is the dialogue about the merits of the ideas. In today’s day and age, the bedrock of the discussion is how to more effectively implement them, refine their techniques, and evaluate their impacts.

For more information about the NWF’s work to promote fair and equitable solutions to climate change, visit the Fair Climate Project page on our website.