Environmental educators look to Edens Lost & Found

Edens Lost & Found co-director/producer Harry Wiland and environmental educator Deb Perryman of Elgin High School in Illinois are among presentors at the North American Association of Environmental Educators 35th annual conference, held this year October 10-14, in St. Paul, MN.

Wiland will host a one-hour segment fromEdens Lost & Found, a public television series that focusses on strategies that contribute to sustainable urban environments. The strategies include parks and open space, urban forestry, watershed management, public art, waste disposal, recycling, green architecture and mass transit alternatives.

Deb Perryman, Illinois Teacher of the Year for 2005, will co-host the Edens presentation with Wiland. Perryman, who is featured in the Chicago segment of Edens Lost & Found, has championed a "service learning approach" that NAAEE is weaving through the conference this year. Perryman is working with Edens Lost & Found to compile curricula that focus on sustainability issues. NAAEE has a preconference workshop on service learning and is planning a community service project for conference participants. Next year's NAAEE conference in Virginia Beach will have an entire strand on service learning.

Envisioning Seattle's Open Space System

In other "econews", the sustainability movement continues to grow and gain a firm hold in cities throughout the world. Seattle's Nancy Rottle submitted this news that shows how ecological and social conduits rely on each other to create healthy human and natural environments. Nancy is Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Citizens from civic, environmental, business, neighborhood and community groups have joined with the University of Washington to create a 100-year plan for Seattle's open spaces. Our collaborative vision reaches from the city limits to the downtown core, creating a comprehensive network of parks, civic spaces, streets, trails, shorelines, and urban forests that will bind neighborhoods to one another, create ecological conduits from the city's ridgelines to its shorelines, and ensure a wealth of green spaces for all citizens to enjoy.

More than 300 citizens on 23 teams collaborated in a Green Futures Charrette to develop an open space plan that addresses the entire city. Each charrette team, led by professionals and composed of planners, designers, developers, artists, engineers, ecologists, citizens and open space advocates, focussed on a different part of the city to envision livable, healthy urban watersheds and neighborhoods for the next century.

Leading up to the charrette, Open Space Seattle 2100 co-sponsored a series of public lectures and events, addressing civic open space, ecological cities, equitable access to open space, green infrastructure and Seattle open space design considerations. Concurrently, UW students conducted supporting research for charrette participants. The resulting charrette teams' plans have been coalesced and will be presented to our partners and supporters in City of Seattle agencies, the Seattle City Council, the Mayor's office, and the public. The plans will endure for the next century, but will have immediate application by influencing agency planning, neighborhood implementation efforts, and a potential parks levy in 2008. Visit the project at www.open2100.org

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