Author: <span>Tracy Davis</span>

Published October 19, 2007 by

Eco-Thought: Avoiding “Green Fatigue”

Can we pretend that it’s last Friday and I posted this on Blog Action Day? Actually, Ross’s post that day about the advantages of a “green” business park was both thoughtful and underacknowledged, so let’s revisit that one and consider this the one-week anniversary post. Maybe every Friday can be Eco-Friday… and green is the new black.

A recent article in the UK publication The Independent asks, “Have You Got Green Fatigue?“, and addresses the cynicism that can set in about huge global or systemic issues like climate change, and questions whether an individual’s lifestyle choices really have any impact. Last summer, the New York Times had an article about buying one’s way into eco-heaven, pointing out the conflict implicit in a consumption-based model of “going green”. (According to the NYT article, “Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with. Maybe the solution is instead of buying five pairs of organic cotton jeans, buy one pair of regular jeans instead.”)

Why is this particularly relevant to Locally Grown? you may ask. Well, I may be cynical on the outside, but deep down I’m a relentless optimist, and I found a nice silvery lining in the cloud: According to the article in The Independent, part of the solution to the problem of “green fatigue” may be found in local action and involvement:

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Environment

Published October 16, 2007 by

And Now For Something Completely Different….

~Uncategorized

Published September 21, 2007 by

Why Can’t the City Get a Real Webmaster?

City website thumbnail.gif

Normally, I wouldn’t volunteer for something in order to get it done, and then bitch about how one has to volunteer for something in order to get it done. But after spending time I can’t afford, once again manipulating !#&@*# document and image files to upload onto NorthfieldPlan.org in the hopes of making City process more transparent, I’m fed up. It’s high time WE CITIZENS put some real political pressure on.

When the City started the Comprehensive Plan/Land Development Regulations revision process, staff (Brian O’Connell and Dan Olson), the consultants (ACP Visioning and Planning), and the planning commissioners (including Ross and myself) all believed that citizen participation and getting information out was extremely important, and were committed to those ideas. Making information available via the web was a key part of that strategy. The problem was that no one at City Hall really knew how to make that happen. Since I was a True Believer, was moderately web-savvy, and had access to a server, I volunteered to build an officially sanctioned sub-site for the Comp Plan revision process (NorthfieldPlan.org) What can I say, I’m a patsy.

Griff has repeatedly asked the question, Hey, if the City spent $80k on a new website, how come it doesn’t work the way it should? (Actually, the money came out of the EDA, because the EDA members – of whom I was one at the time – believed the song-and-dance about how a good website was an economic development tool. Yeah, it could be. If it actually contained current, timely, useful, interactive, multimedia material. But that’s a whole ‘nother post. And the “new” website is about three years old now.)

Anyway, the content-management system built for the City is fine, but there’s no one minding the store. When the website was done, the understanding was that departments should/would have the freedom to manage their own little online fiefdoms. As a general rule, however, the management level of City staff is just not very tech-literate. I don’t mean that upper-level staff should spend their time uploading files, even if they had the technical skill to do so. In fact, no one would seriously think that a volunteer member of that vortex known as the Planning Commission should spend their time on that task either. What I mean is that since most of the City department heads don’t have a good understand of how Internet technology is being used or where it’s going, in either municipal or other contexts, it’s difficult for them to wrap their heads around what can or should be made available on the City website. Some of the administrative staff might have a better understanding of that, but they don’t have the authority to determine what should be put online or to be proactive enough to seek content.

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Gov't & Policy

Livefront Mike Bollinger

Published September 19, 2007 by

A Caption Contest to Bring Down the [Open] House

Fluff Gov't & Policy

Published September 15, 2007 by

“Griff’s Blog” Goes Too Far

Blogosphere Fluff

Published August 23, 2007 by

“Economic Gardening” – Business Friendliness Redux

gardening hands.jpgThe City of Littleton, CO has pioneered a different sort of economic development strategy for the past decade. Known as “economic gardening”, this strategy shifts the emphasis from “economic hunting”, i.e. recruiting companies to relocate, to helping a community’s existing businesses and entrepreneurs grow into healthy, vibrant companies with a strong employment base.

Historically, small businesses have accounted for about 75% of all job growth, plus half to two-thirds of the nation’s innovations and inventions. According to the NY Times, small businesses accounted for more than half of all private-sector jobs created last month. And of 150,000 new jobs, 91,000 of them were in businesses with fewer than 50 employees. (Large businesses, however, cut 4000 jobs in June.) And the SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration) has determined that companies with fewer than 20 employees created 85 percent of the new new jobs over the most recent 14 years of available census data (up to 2003).

Given facts like these, it simply makes sense to cultivate and nurture entrepreneurial activity and our existing businesses, rather than putting all our economic eggs into the recruitment basket. However, as Ross pointed out in an earlier post Northfield does not have a reputation for being “business-friendly”.

But why not? And what does that mean, anyway? (The most vocal sector of the “be more business-friendly” contingent usually uses the term as code for “developer-friendly”, which isn’t the same thing at all.)

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Businesses

Published August 21, 2007 by

“How’s Everything Tasting?” or, Yes, We Be Edumacated a/k/a Illustration of Stupid Societal Tipping Points

Fluff K-12

Published August 8, 2007 by

Cannon River Pollution Control

Last night I leafed through the current issue of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer (a publication of the Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources). The July/August issue had a focus on Lake…

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Environment

Published July 27, 2007 by

We The People: What One of Them Wants Northfield to Be

In the comments to my previous post about Northfield/Apple Valley, Anne B. said, “I’ve been asking for two years and I don’t have a clue what you and Ross and others want the city to be.” Well, I’d certainly never try to speak for Ross and others, but I’ll take another, more comprehensive crack at the subject to see on which points we might find agreement and disagreement.

What I “want Northfield to be”, or rather, my vision for the community, is fairly straightforward, and I’ll try to limit my details to those concerned with planning and land use. Things like “quality education”, “good health care”, “controlling heroin use”, and “promoting the arts” are beyond the purview of this discussion. At least for now.

The short answer is, I’d like to see Northfield be a community that demonstrates cradle-to-grave livability based on the collective wisdom of the last five millennia or so of urbanized societies; a cohesive, functioning community of people with a multiplicity of connections to each other (education, recreation, work, civic, church, social) that go beyond the superficial.

That means a mix of ages, a mix of occupations, a mix of land and building uses….. built to a scale designed for the convenience of human beings (not for 2000 pounds of motorized steel and aluminum). This discourages isolationism and encourages interaction between residents through all seasons of life, which fosters a genuine sense of community. It’s also psychologically and socially healthy, and if done well, sustainable. No more bowling alone.

People have known how to do this for a long time, and relevant examples abound. We’ve lost a lot of that knowledge in the 20th century, particularly in the postwar era, but the tools and examples are still there, and the knowledge is being recovered. (If this is too subtle, or too vague, I’d be happy to provide an extensive reading list and point to relevant resources to elucidate the things that are implicit in these first few paragraphs. For now, I’d like to keep moving along toward a longer, more detailed answer.)

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Businesses Environment Gov't & Policy