Students Integrate Sustainable Planning with Environmental Justice
In this Issue:
- Students Integrate Sustainable Planning with Environmental Justice by Jill Ratner and Myesha Williams
- Giving More than Just Money by Tim Little & Karla James
- Pack Trains Return to the Historic Kelsey Trail by Kevin Hendrick
- Welcome Amy Lyons to Rose Foundation’s Board of Directors
- Click here to read the entire Fall 2011 Newsletter
Students Integrate Sustainable Planning with Environmental Justice
by Jill Ratner and Myesha Williams
Students Integrate Sustainable Planning with Environmental Justice
By Myesha Williams & Jill Ratner
Ready to leave the dock! For our first field trip, we cruised the waterways of the Delta with California Delta Water Education, a Rose Foundation grantee. Students learned about California water supply and demand, the history and the current state of the Delta, got a close-up view of the levees around some of the islands, and noticed the contrast between the windmills on one side and the fossil fuel-powered power plants on the other.
Rose’s Foundation’s New Voices are Rising project just wrapped up its sixth annual Summer Advocacy Training Institute. This summer, 13 amazing students from five East Bay high schools explored what it takes to plan communities for climate protection, environmental health, and environmental justice.
This year’s jumping off point was SB 375, a 2008 California law that requires regional agencies to integrate transportation, housing and land-use planning in order to come up with “sustainable community strategies” that reduce driving and associated greenhouse gas emissions. We asked the students to tell us how the Bay Area should grow for the next 25 years. We also asked them to think critically and creatively about their own neighborhoods; to point out the things they liked; things they would like to change; and to offer a vision for a sustainable community.
We went on a series of field trips to investigate planning issues such as water supply, housing, energy use and traffic. After the trips, the students participated in group brainstorming sessions where they made posters illustrating their visions for an ideal sustainable block. The posters included local food shops, restaurants, neighborhood gardens, retail, a neighborhood school, mixed use buildings, bike lanes, and shaded bus stops for convenient public transportation.
One student proposed creating a “Green Park” in West Oakland that would provide a community gathering area where neighbors could relax, and that would improve air quality, beautify the area and help keep the temperature down by counteracting the urban heat island effect that causes temperatures to rise in neighborhoods with lots of pavement and few trees.
We look forward to seeing where our New Voices students take the work they started this summer. It is an honor and a privilege to work with all of the students.