The Natural Distinctiveness of Memphis Yards

I like the inconsistently-mowed, over-grown, under-manicured and beautiful yards of Memphis. I like them cultivated, and I like them forgotten. Yards where the trees and vines and shrubs and flowers grow, grow, grow. Places with less unsustainable mowing and more natural curation.

A thought brought to me by the natural background of the film Third Ward TX,and its contrast with Houston's diabolic hyper-mowed freeways and overdeveloped developments.

Like Houston, the humidity coming off the Gulf of Mexico turbo-charges the natural of Memphis. When we stop treating the stuff growing outside as a problem, or an enemy, chopping and mowing and paving it into boring placelessness, we'll find ourselves living in a galaxy-class landscape, like the beautiful setting of Third Ward, TX.

Update: To possibly illuminate the aesthetic, here are some more photos.

The Sustainability of Preservation

You're a fool or a fraud if you say you are an environmentally conscious builder and yet are throwing away historic buildings.

Donovan Rypkema
PlaceEconomics

For some time I've been searching for links between preservation and the blossoming sustainability movement. Not much luck or skill until a correspondent sent me this article from the Journal of the American Planning Association that lays out the growing case for reuse.

Two words: embodied energy.

To strengthen the case even further, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is funding a study to create metrics for the embodied energy in existing buildings. It's also pushing the LEED rating system to give more credit to building reuse

According to Barbara Campagna of the NationalTrust, the USGBC has acknowledged that the point system is skewed against preservation and has asked the Trust to lead an effort to create preservation metrics for the next version of LEED, due out in two years.

If we're not vigilant, green will be what Memphis calls the next wave of destruction and abandonment.

Crib Notes for Sustainable Shelby

Mayor A.C. Wharton launched the Sustainable Shelby initiative a week ago. Hopefully it will give a strong and sustainable political voice for walkability, mass transit, increased density and other means to sustainable neighborhoods and urbanism.

However, besides its brief website and this Memphis Flyer article (read the last paragraph for a huge challenge to real sustainability -- the gap between earnest words and oblivious action) I can't find much of an online voice for the initiative.

I do know that Doug Farr's book Sustainable Urbanism will be the official text for the initiative and I also know that Portland economist Joe Cortright spoke at the kickoff. Unfortunately, Sustainable Urbanism costs $75 and the kickoff has passed.

Luckily there are several online sources that might give us an idea where Sustainable Shelby is heading:

• This interview with Doug Farr on Smart City Radio, where he talks about his book and the key LEED-ND (ND for neighborhood development) rating system. Since I fear the word "green" will be used as PR cover for business-as-usual -- whether regressive (white-flight, sprawl) or destructive (demolition, clearcutting) -- I'm glad that host Carol Coletta questions him whether LEED-ND favors greenfield development over infill and brownfield development.
• The slides from Joe Cortright's presentation. I understand they weren't actually presented at the kickoff because the projector didn't work, so you can see something the attendees couldn't.
  

Zoo Leaders Escape and Maul Nature

The only thing I can add to Naomi Van Tol's eloquent Letter to the Editor, which denounces the Memphis Zoo's hypocrisy of promoting nature while destroying it mere yards away, are the pictures below.

From above before...

And after...




Nothing left alive within the fences.


Saruman and the Orcs and other great defilers from history and fiction would be very proud of the Zoo!

Meanwhile mere yards away, sage words for zoo visitors.

and...


and...

But don't look backwards from the Amphitheatre...


Cause you might see once living parts of earth...

dismembered and left for dead by stewards of nature.

Why?

Maybe Chief Seattle can tell us.

Here he is guarding the Sacred Cave of the Donors.


Just read below his lines.

Global Warming Solutions at Rhodes

From Greening Greater Memphis:

Focus the Nation has organized a national teach-in Webcast to help educate America about solutions for global warming. The 2% Solution is a national, interactive Webcast featuring Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider, sustainability expert Hunter Lovins, and green jobs pioneer Van Jones. Their goal is to have over 10,000 screenings including one here in Memphis. Participation is encouraged with cell phone voting.

Rhodes College is hosting a screening of the Webcast on Wednesday, January 30th at 7pm located in the Frazier Jelke Science Center- Room B. There will be refreshments and green-related Door Prizes.

For more information about the event, please visit their website: Focus the Nation.

A solution I'd like to see is an international boycott of clear cutters. Take a day, January 30, 2008 for instance, and declare it Day Zero for clear cuts. Start geotagging clear cuts. Boycott any corporation, any organization, that creates or uses a clear cut space. Clear cut real-estate will become economically tainted and lose value as corporations avoid those spots. To prevent abuse, we could use before and after satellite images from apps like Google Earth.

With the oppressive Gulf of Mexico humidity, Memphis receives the balance of the cooling and beautiful forest. To destroy and replace it with an asphalt desert, whose shacks must then be cooled by massive always-on air-conditioners, is idiocratic.