Chicago Greens its Alleys
Ahh, a place where the green trend is not getting on my nerves in terms of its trendiness and actually is effecting change*:Â Chicago is greening its alleys. This is the type of move I would expect from a landscape architecture studio student thesis, perhaps completed in Portland Oregon, or somewhere deep in Vermont. Yippee, these forward-thinking ideas are moving west!
Chicago is chock-full of non-permeable alleys, a major source of non-point-source pollution, and they are in the midst of changing that. In today’s New York Times, there was a fantastic article all about it - check it out here. As I am sure I won’t be able to stop myself from boring you with Atlanta drought stories in the upcoming weeks, I promise to send a copy of this to Mayor Shirley Franklin and Governor Sonny Perdue. While Mr. Perdue seeks to hoard water away from other states within the watershed in court case water wars and make a big show of praying for rain, let’s see if he actually will try to do something about our situation like Chicago is doing.
*I have nothing against the green movement, but the way I feel about it was summed up perfectly in 30 Rock’s NBC Green Week episode that featured David Schwimmer as Greenzo. It’s starting to get like the grunge trend; sometime after the movie Singles was released, Blaine Trump started showing up at fundraisers in haute couture wool and flannel, and soon after the trend went away while glamour made a big return. I don’t want the trendiness of the green movement to reach the tipping point and cause the backlash return of hedonistic wastefulness.
photo by Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
