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green cities forum 2005
Cities Sharing Ideas and Strategies
If you were going to develop a world-class sustainability plan, where would you start? In an effort to draw from the best ideas and practices of other cities nationwide, Denver and the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado hosted the first Denver Green Cities Forum in 2005.
Top officials from leading sustainability programs in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Oakland came to Denver for two days in late November. They met intensively with city staff to discuss and fine tune Greenprint goals and strategies, and participated in a large public forum at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.
In addition to sharing valuable lessons learned, forum members benefited from meeting one another and sharing ideas about common challenges and opportunities.
Speakers & Presentations
Susan Anderson, City of Portland
Susan Anderson is the director of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development (OSD), which works to ensure the environmental and economic health of Portland's neighborhoods and businesses.
Her office is responsible for citywide solid waste collection and recycling, energy conservation, renewable energy resources, sustainable construction practices, utility regulatory issues and a variety of other environmental programs. It is also the lead agency for implementing Portland's Local Action Plan on Global Warming - a local plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent by 2010.
Over the years, Susan has worked with more than 30 communities to promote resource efficiency, the use of renewable resources and sustainable practices in commercial facilities, housing, transportation, land use planning and economic development. Prior to her work with Portland, Susan was director of an environmental consulting firm. She also held positions with the Oregon Department of Energy, was an environmental land use planner, and a public relations professional.
She holds undergraduate and advanced degrees in economics, environmental science, and urban and regional planning.
Download Susan's presentation (3,131K PDF)
Randy Hayes, City of Oakland
Randy Hayes, founder and board president of the Rainforest Action Network, is currently Director of Sustainability in the office of Oakland's mayor Jerry Brown. Randy is a board member of the International Forum on Globalization. Believing that the international and national levels have failed to orchestrate the shift to ecological sustainability, Hayes calls for a city-led, bottom-up movement as our best shot to protect the large natural systems that nurture all life as well as fostering dignified lives for all people.
Randy is working with cities worldwide on the development of local living economies. He believes that, if corporate-led economic globalization is undercutting nation-states and destroying communities, than community-led economic localization is the antidote. Randy is a veteran of many highly visible corporate accountability campaigns, has advocated for the rights of Indigenous peoples, and is a promoter of local independent business and economies.
Hayes has a master's degree in environmental planning from San Francisco State University. Randy's master's thesis was the award-winning film The Four Corners, which won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award for Best Student Documentary in 1983.
He also contributed to Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, published by San Francisco's Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. in 2002. Not satisfied with short term thinking, his 500-year plan spells out a vision of a sustainable society and how to get there. Randy Hayes has been described in the Wall Street Journal as "an environmental pit bull."
Download Randy's presentation (127K PDF)
Sadhu Johnston, City of Chicago
Sadhu Johnston is the Commissioner of Chicago's Department of the Environment. He was appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley in July 2005 after serving as Assistant to the Mayor for Green Initiatives for one and a half years. His responsibilities include the overall management of the DOE, which administers programs to protect and restore Chicago's natural resources, reduce waste, clean up brownfields, promote energy efficiency and reliability, educate the public about environmental issues, and enforce the city's environmental protection laws.
As Assistant to the Mayor for Green Initiatives, other responsibilities included the coordination and facilitation of green efforts throughout the city. He has been involved in the policies, programs and regulations related to green building, recycling, green roofs, public education, and the development of their Environmental Action Agenda.
Prior to working for Chicago, Sadhu served as Executive Director of Cleveland's Green Building Coalition. The organization's accomplishments included a green renovation of an historic bank known as the Cleveland Environmental Center. The center, which serves as a home for various nonprofit organizations features a green roof with native endangered plants, a geothermal heating and cooling system, healthy indoor air quality, and many other green building features.
Download Sadhu's presentation (4,029K PDF)
Steve Nicholas, City of Seattle
Steve is Seattle's Director of Sustainability & Environment. Steve's previous lives include director of the Institute for Sustainable Communities' NGO capacity-building program in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, senior environmental planner with the Seattle Planning Department, watershed planning and stewardship manager for the King County Department of Natural Resources, and analyst and project manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Download Steve's presentation (1,765K PDF)
Lisa Romney, Salt Lake City
After graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a master's degree in landscape planning and ecology, Lisa Romney was hired as the environmental advisor to the Salt Lake City mayor. Lisa's background in natural resource management, along with environmental studies and large-scale landscape planning, was the perfect fit for a job description that included management of all urban environmental issues from community recycling programs to the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.
Lisa organized and implemented Salt Lake City's Green Initiative, which aims for innovative environmental solutions that not only protect the environment, but also improve the city's social and economic welfare. Under her direction, Salt Lake City has improved residential recycling, increased energy efficiency, become the largest single purchaser of wind power in the state of Utah, created the "e2 Business" program, will meet the greenhouse gas reduction goals set forth in the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, and has become known worldwide as an environmentally progressive and responsible city. Lisa serves as board president for the Utah Society for Environmental Education. She writes a monthly bicycle column for Catalyst Magazine and was featured by Cycling Utah in September 2004.
Download Lisa's presentation (2,285K PDF)
Beth Conover, City of Denver
Beth Conover was a special advisor to Denver Mayor John W. Hickenlooper from 2003-2007 and former director of Greenprint Denver. During her career, she has worked for 20 years on issues of resource conservation and development.
From 1989-1991, Conover worked on community development and reforestation projects in Zimbabwe, southern Africa. From 1994-1997, she was co-author of the Stapleton Development Plan for the redevelopment of the former airport in Denver, Colorado, and Director of Parks and Environment for the Stapleton Development Corporation.
She was the owner of Headwaters Consulting, LLC, from 1998-2003, providing strategic planning and program development services to a wide range of public, private and nonprofit clients, including the Green Industries of Colorado, the State of Colorado, The Nature Conservancy, Cherry Creek Stewardship Partners and Mayor Webb's South Platte River Commission.
Download Beth's presentation (414K PDF)
Images on this page are courtesy of John Schoenwalter.
