Smart Green Infrastructure: How To Grow Sustainable Cities

Andy Lipkis, Founder and President of TreePeople, describes how this organization has pioneered an integrated approach to managing urban ecosystems as watersheds in the Los Angeles region. This involves strategic tree planting, tree-mimicking technologies, and community engagement to generate multiple solutions to the environmental threats facing our cities, including ensuring a sustainable water supply, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preventing water and air pollution, fostering stronger neighborhoods, and creating jobs. For a summary of TreePeople’s six demonstration projects that are now collecting 1.25 million gallons of water every time it rains 1″ in Los Angeles, visit www.treepeople.org. Video Going to Green: Planting Seeds of Change with Community Forestry produced by the Media & Policy Center Foundation for PBS.

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.
This half hour video documents the ongoing work of Permaculture Gurus, Geoff and Nadia Lawton, in the Dead Sea Valley. It begins with the famous original ‘Greening the Desert’ five minute video clip, and then continues into Part II, a 2009 update to the 2001 original.

You’ll get to see and learn about the original Greening the Desert site and see some of the spin-off effects of its influence throughout Jordan, and you’ll also be introduced to a new educational demonstration site that was started in 2008.

You can see the video, and more information about it, in its original post.

This is inspiring, practical work – the kind of work that should be encouraged, supported and emulated worldwide. It is the ultimate root-cause type of aid work.

Check out this “Water-Friendly Landscaping“.