Greening Cities, by Claire Pieper
Last Tuesday, on May 26th, EAF was proud to jointly host the Frizzell Family Speaker and Learning series, a student-run initiative to commemorate the life of Alexandra Frizzell. Alex was a student of environmental economics with passionate interests in agriculture, health and natural resources. To explore her interests, the students of the Frizzell Committee invited Geoff Cape, CEO of the Evergreen Foundation as this year’s keynote speaker. Mr. Cape opened his discussion with commentary on megatrends – specifically a rapidly growing world population coupled rapidly growing urban centers. While cities continue to expand, surrounding farmland is converted to urban use and the demands on natural resources are stretched to support a growing population. Focusing on these megatrends, Mr. Cape developed the Evergreen Foundationto teach citizens how to better engage with their cities in order to build sustainable urban centers.. Evergreen seeks to build public and private partnerships to establish trust and foster and entrepreneurial spirit in its projects. Through two case studies– the Evergreen Brick Works and Toronto River Valley Projects, Mr. Cape attributed a strong, large, multi-dimensional team and a solid business plan, combined with courage and faith to turn visions into reality. Evergreen also supports children’s education and local artists as part of a holistic plan to to appeal to diverse communities in creative ways. Evergreen has found significant success with Brick Works—a “community environmental centre that inspires and equips visitors to live, work and play more sustainably.”In 2010, Brick Works was named one of the top geotourism destinations in the world by National Geographic.
Mr. Cape expressed his firm belief that in the upcoming years, cities everywhere will be vying for their own identity and will be looking to make wide-sweeping infrastructure improvements and sustainability strides in order to stay competitive. Yet, in order to made improvements, cities will not only need creative sources of funding but also strong leaders. Mr. Cape sees Evergreen as being an integral player in supporting cities through future challenges posed by urbanization and climate change to become sustainable hubs. Mr. Cape and Evergreen see the need for large investments but also for citizens to make impacts at small levels from the ground up. Moreover, Mr. Cape believes that cities hold the solution to the environmental and social problems posed by growing population and changes in climate through compact living, which promotes efficiency and an ecosystem for a multitude of minds to interact and to create innovative solutions. In addition to citizen engagement, Mr. Cape credits Evergreen’s success to the ability to coordinate the public sphere, for example government municipalities, with the private sphere, for example insurance and energy companies. Finally, Cape also offered in valuable advice during his speech, expressing the need for teamwork, resilience, strong leadership, credibility, and trust.
Mr. Cape’s visit was part of the Frizzell Family Speaker and Learning Series, which commemorates the life, accomplishments and aspirations of Alexandra Frizzell by engaging students in the fields of agriculture, environment and health through social science inquiry. The event was co-sponsored by the College, Chicago Society, the Green Economics Group, Program on Global Environment and the Environment, Agriculture and Food Group of the University of Chicago.