Chicago Matters: Growing Forward
March 3rd, 2008Garden rooftops sprouting throughout the city. Permeable street pavement and alleys. Solar panels charging Millenium Park, the Art Institute and Field Museum. The overnight transformation of Meigs Field into a park. Real estate developers vying for energy efficient building designs. And plans to generate 20 percent of the city’s electricity from renewable resources — Chicago – city of the big shoulders, manufacturing and regional transit hub– now a GREEN metropolis?But how green is Chicago, really? And how long will it take before the city becomes truly green?For its next chapter in the year-long public affairs project Chicago Matters, the Chicago Community Trust will be underwriting the journalistic work of public television and radio, along with the Chicago Reporter and libraries, as they examine the transformation of a major urban center into a more sustainable place to live and work. Under the banner Growing Forward, this innovative series will allow each media partner to investigative, probe, and explain to readers, viewers and listeners what going green really means.On this episode of Community, Media & You, we’ll talk with Chicago Matters partners from Chicago Public Radio and WTTW and look into their upcoming programing.
www.colum.edu
March 13th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Would love to see a report that details how green chicago’s premier event, Taste of Chicago, is. It would be the fabulous for the city to demand that this event really showcase Mayor Daley’s goal of being the greenest city it the world…Do things get recycled? How many plastic cups and bottles do the millions of visitors dump into the trash versus recycling bins…Does the Illinois Restaurant Association provide any guidance, support, criteria to vendors or is it just a free for all? Please investigate, probe and explain this…
March 13th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Many years ago, the city had an arrangement with the Uptown Recycling Center, who did source separated pick-up of recyclables at Taste of Chicago. It was an inhuman mess for the collectors [which included the then executive director]and there was not much cooperation between Park District trash haulers and the recyclers. The program was dropped. I don’t know what has happened the past couple of years cause I try and avoid Taste at all costs. But I bet there are a lot of blu bags floating around and way too many plastic cups & spoons tossed in landfills.