Crops in the City

2010 For the Greener Good Series

On Tuesday, January 26, the Museum kicks off its 2010 season of the ground breaking series For the Greener Good: Conversations that Will Change the World with an exploration of urban agriculture. City grown crops can activate blighted property, encourage more healthful diets, reduce the carbon footprint of what we eat, and create food oases where there were once deserts. Municipalities like Washington, D.C., are considering new laws that require public school produce to be grown within a 100-mile radius. Working farms are sprouting up in the empty lots of Detroit, Michigan. And groups in Los Angeles are harnessing social media to post maps that show where fruit trees are publically accessible and ready to be harvested.

The program will feature the president of Slow Food USA, Portland, Oregon’s food policy and programs manager, and the founder of DC-based Common Good City Farm in a discussion about the challenges and opportunities of urban agriculture. Food not only provides sustenance, but also a vital link to culture and heritage as cities and non-profits disseminate once-lost food recipes from an earlier generation.

Moderated by New York Times “By Design” columnist Allison Arieff, these experts will share strategies for repealing outdated laws that prohibit growing food in publically accessible land, ways to save heirloom species from tomatoes to turkeys, and how individuals are harnessing Facebook and Twitter to promote food literacy. One can imagine not just ornamental cherry trees around the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall but also fruiting trees, more restaurants that harvest their own tomatoes grown on site, and giant herb pots replacing ugly concrete security barricades around the city.
 

A key objective of the For the Greener Good series is to engage the public in the discussion. To help achieve this goal, the Museum is launching a new effort to reach an even broader group by encouraging the public to send in questions for the panelists. The Museum will use social media outlets to solicit and collect the questions so be sure to follow the Museum at twitter.com/BuildingMuseum or become a fan of the Museum on Facebook. You can also submit your question in our online survey. All of the For the Greener Good programs are filmed and posted to the Museum’s web site, so if you can’t make the program you can watch it later to see if your question was selected.
 
The For the Greener Good series continues on February 25 by examining whether working in a green building can actually make employees healthier. A senior vice president from Bank of America will share preliminary data on a comprehensive study of 5,000 employees that have been working at 1 Bryant Park, Bank of America’s new LEED Platinum skyscraper in New York City. He will be joined by the director of climate change policy at a global private investment firm and by Vivian Loftness, a professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon. The panel will be moderated by Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record.

On March 11, experts will explore building materials’ global supply chain from China to the U.S. Just how green are those bamboo floors and CFL bulbs? And what is the carbon footprint of door handles made in Malaysia? Architects, researchers, and executives will offer tips on how to avoid green washing. The series concludes on April 29 with a report on an investigation linking students who attend green schools with higher test scores. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Public Radio, and the architectural firm Perkins+Will lead this conversation.

To register and for more information on this ground breaking series visit: For the Greener Good 
 

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