• From ClevelandBikes:
  Cleveland Metroparks Zoo will be installing bike racks to park 350 bikes at the Zoo entrance, hopefully in time for spring. The racks will be located in the Hippo Lot, just behind the main ticketing booth. ClevelandBikes has offered bike parking with the Ohio City Bicycle Co-Op during Earthfest at the Zoo, advocating that more bike parking should be a permanent element at the Zoo, founded upon a commitment to nature and education. We have also pointed out to builders and developers that cycling makes good business sense, providing credits for sound environmental design and construction. The Zoo, which shares the commitment to environmentally sound design practices, will use the bike parking to meet LEED certification in the design and construction of the new elephant exhibit area
• From All Aboard Ohio:
  3-C Corridor summit in Cleveland—Join Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and All Aboard Ohio at a breakfast meeting in Cleveland on Wednesday Jan. 7th to help build support for passenger trains linking Ohio’s major cities. Ohio Rail Development Commission Executive Director Matthew Dietrich will discuss what is being done by Amtrak; why the state is motivated to pursue this project; and what are the potential planning, funding and implementation timelines.
  Also: ODOT Changes Project Evaluation Criteria
• From the Biodiversity Alliance:
  A new program being developed for 2009 by Biodiversity Alliance is the Academy, an informational program designed to keep staff and volunteers at the four Alliance institutions up-to-date on the threat posed by invasive species to our natural heritage. Information will be presented in several formats, including brown bags, stewardship opportunities and in the Connections newsletter.
  
  

Just as Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas reminds us of the true spirit of the holidays, this essay by Bob Hinkle, Ph.D., Chief of Outdoor Education at the Cleveland Metroparks, is a simple, but powerful reminder of what we’re really looking for at the winter holidays:

Love, time and caring are not obtainable in any mall this season, or any season. They are gifts of the heart, and unique to you and me. They are not found in glittering decorations, or twinkling lights, or in mind-numbing music. They are gifts that are found in small quiet places and unexpected times. You can create them, if you try.

Read on.

Re-imagining a more sustainable Cleveland starts from the premise that the loss of population over the last 60 years will not likely be reversed in the near term and that Cleveland’s future as a post industrial city that can attract and retain residents and investment depends in large part in how it adapts to population decline and changing land use patterns to realize its potential as a green city on a blue lake.

—From the final report produced by Neighborhood Progress, Inc., December 2008

We continue to report about this 30-member (and growing) group exploring innovative strategies to reuse vacant land (3,300 parcels) in Cleveland. They recently produced a final report and recommendations on how vacant land can derive benefit for low-income and underemployed residents, increase community self-reliance for food and energy production and link natural and built systems.

We’re starting to see a nice slow burn of ideas bubbling up from the concentration of resources that NPI and the Urban Design Center have marshaled. They include:

Wind power in Cleveland is “no longer a matter of whether, but when?” said Case President Barbara Snyder at the opening of yesterday’s ‘Building an Advanced Energy Future for Offshore Wind’ conference.

Case has invested $200,000 in plans for the world’s first freshwater wind turbine off the shores of Cleveland and a complimentary research center. Case is home to the Great Lakes Energy Innovation Center which raised more than $4 million from Cleveland and Maltz foundations to build the wind farm and a local knowledge base that will be used to establish renewable energy companies of the future. One million dollars went to hire JW America, a company with roots in Germany and some massive wind projects under its belt, to study the feasibility.

This conference gathered all of the players for an update on the study, which will be released in April 2009, and related issues like regulations and environmental concerns.

Peter Mandelstam, head of Bluewater Wind, noted the challenges in placing turbines in Lake Erie. They include:

• Higher (per kWh) cost because coal is cheap
• Ice floes – increased the cost of the foundation
• Depth – has to be 30 ft. or less which means it might have to be closer to the shore and so it could create view-shed obstructions

“It may be a tad more expensive in terms of cents per kilowatt hour, but there are so many benefits,” he said, noting clean tech jobs and tons of carbon dioxide avoided.

Amalie Lipstreu, Ohio Department of Agriculture’s sustainable agriculture program manager, shared updates on the state’s plans to increase the percentage of locally grown food production, distribution and consumption this morning. The formation of an Ohio Food Policy Council – and its four task forces – last year was an important step.

Also, Dr. Elaine Borawski, a professor and biostatistician at Case shared results from a Cleveland survey on food preferences and how urbanites view their access to fresh, healthy food.

Read more.

• From The American Public Transportation Association (APTA)
  Americans continue to ride public transportation at record levels even though gas prices have declined. APTA said more than 2.8 billion trips were taken on public transportation in the third quarter of 2008, up 6.5% from the third quarter of 2007 and the largest quarterly increase in public transportation ridership in 25 years.

  APTA noted that, by contrast, vehicle miles of travel (VMT) on the nation's highways declined in the same period by 4.6%, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

• Cleveland.com reports: Passenger rail service from Cleveland to Cincinnati could be a reality by 2010 if the state gets $100 million in proposed infrastructure stimulus money.

  Once carbon is taxed or assigned a price that corresponds to its cost to produce and burn, it will be even clearer the value we receive investing in the infrastructure to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) between Ohio’s major metro areas.

  
  

We have lots of places in Cleveland where it’s not so great to grow up, next to vacant land. But, we can make a healthier future for kids. We need to be strategic about how we develop this land…to build a local food system in Cleveland.

—Bobbi Reichtell, Senior VP of Planning, Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI) describing to the Cleveland Planning Commission last week their study to re-imagine uses for Cleveland’s 3,300 parcels of vacant land.

For the past year, NPI and the Kent State Urban Design Center (UDC) have led what GreenCityBlueLake Institute Director David Beach describes as “some of the most exciting land-use planning I’ve seen in the last thirty years.”

Informally known as the Cleveland Land Lab, it's the result of monthly gatherings of city staff, nonprofit groups and planners. Alternately they met around a giant table to discuss data maps or spent an afternoon in small group charrettes puzzling out how to deal with decades of unraveling from dense neighborhoods to a pattern that more closely reveals a suburban landscape. Last Friday, they aired their conclusions—captured in what they call a ‘pattern book’ and a set of recommendations—on how ‘shrinking cities’ such as Cleveland can think strategically about redeploying an abundance of abandoned property.

Cleveland’s chickens and bees ordinance will be presented to Cleveland City Council today.

Organizations working on local food, such as the Ohio State University Extension, are in favor of the legislation and have been working with city council members such as Joe Cimperman to make sure the law doesn’t create a financial burden for residents.

One of the sticking points in an early draft was an application and $200 permit fee from the city’s Building Department. It is widely expected that the permit and fee will be removed, which will also relieve the city’s already busy bureaucracy.

“Public support is still needed because we’re not sure that all the votes are there,” says Morgan Taggart of OSU Extension.

While it is unlikely council will vote on the measure tonight, public support is still needed. Other avenues of support include a letter writing campaign, which Carl Skalak, owner of Blue Pike Farm in Cleveland and others are helping to organize.

“As growers, we feel alone,” Jocelyn Kirkwood of Gather ‘Round Farm shared with a large, sympathetic gathering interested in urban agriculture at AJ Rocco’s last week.

Evidenced by the turnout and recent surge in energy around building a local food movement, urban farmers and their advocates are getting together and building a community.

Topics of this unaffiliated group ranged from how to get more earthworms in your compost to expanding the EBT (or Food Stamps) program at farmer’s markets. Themes emerged, including a need for a stronger voice and more organization of ideas and individual growers. Speaking of the latter, Kirkwood proposed an Urban Growers Association, a support network for those market gardeners in the city and the small farmers in the region looking to expand markets for their mushrooms, honey, heirloom tomatoes, artisan bread and on.

“We need a mission and goals, like get the city to open up more vacant land. Cleveland should look at what’s going on in Youngstown, where they’re buying (vacant land) cheaply or leasing it,” Kirkwood said, referring to the new Grow Youngstown program. “That’s how we’ll build up an agriculture economy and food security for the region.”

Count Lansing, Michigan among cities pioneering green streets. Their usually conservative Public Service department—feeling emboldened by a regional stormwater initiative—invested $1 million in a series of sidewalk planters along its Michigan Avenue that, through simple curb cuts, directs water running off the street into 18-inch deep, block long beds of soil, gravel and native plants which filter pollutants out.

These ‘bioretention cells’ have the added benefit of absorbing ALL of the water rushing off the streets from 90% of the storms that occur.

The emerging science of green infrastructure has the potential to improve the environmental performance of cities and their stormwater management, Chad Gamble, Lansing’s director of Public Service told a group today at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.