Here is a message from Bill Marston, a member of ECLA PA, and the other lovely folk working on the upcoming conference:
Bill Marston, AIA & LEED AP is a member of the Relocalization Network's maturing growth - in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan region, another jewel along the legacy I-95 corridor anchored by Washington DC to the south of us and Boston at the northern end.
An interesting fact about this area: we are obviously the substantial majority of our nation's preponderance of people who live within 50 miles of oceanic waters. Hmmm....
Bill is a founding member of Green Village Philadelphia, a non-profit eco-city developer. We are tried and true city-lovers so we aim to create a model urban ecovillage which other big cities can emulate or at least learn from, just as we have learned from Cleveland, Cincinatti and LA Ecovillages.
Bill and colleague Rael Bassan of Chicago decided to throw a conference! The US Green Building Council (creator of the LEED Rating System) is having its 30,000 or 40,000 attendees enjoy its annual Greenbuild conference in the City of Big Shoulders this November. Bill's consulting practice is a member firm and tried to get urban greening much deeper into the conference this year, and has succeeded instead in creating a parallel conference on the bigger picture of a sustainable built fabric.
As we develop our website and program everyone among the Relocalization Networkers should look for us, offer support and advice, and should plan on attending!
WORKING TITLE: Developing Urban Ecovillages: Toward Eco Cities
DATES: November 9-11, 2007 (Friday evening, all day Saturday, two-thirds day Sunday)
PLACE: the Nature Center in Chicago, 8 minutes by rapid transit from the downtown USGBC conf. site
WEBSITE: emerging c/o www.chicagolandsfutures.org
affiliate website
PLANNING COMMITTEE: Bill Marston - PHL, Rael Bassan - CHI, Lois Arkin - LA, Jim Schenk - CIN, Manda Gillespie - CHI, William Cerf - NY, Jacob Corvidae - DET, others...
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Bill Marston has taken a few pages from the pre-release of Daniel Lerch's new sustainable Cities Guidebook to several public meetings. As a member of the officially established Citizens Committee of the greater Philadelphia MPO's (Metropolitan Planning Organization) Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, he is using it to assist the shift in public policy toward an energy-based environmentally just planning framework.
