Green Infrastructure brings in the Green

In various conversations, developers and city officials have noted Seattle's potential for a strong leadership role in the emerging green-building and green-urbanism industry, and the confluence of visionary planners, designers, politicians and academics, suggest the possibility of leveraging these expertises to form a joint City/University collaboration that will advance the theoretical and practical applications of Green Urbanism within the City of Seattle. To capitalize, they've suggested a joint UW/CoS initiative. This initiative would build on existing programs including the Mayor's Environmental Action Agenda and of the UW President's Policy on Environmental Stewardship and the university's Earth Initiative, while also furthering Seattle's prominence and magnetism as a progressive city leading locally to affect issues of global significance.

There are also opportunities to bring economic benefits to Seattle. As this article by Steve Nicholas, who directs the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, suggests. As a region, we are already ahead of the curve, but how do we maintain that edge showing the citizens of the world how to rethink urbanism in an exciting new way.