By: Joel McCord

A movement for urban environmentalism is gathering force in cities around the country and around the world, a force that says cities can be made better.

In specific terms, cities have turned asphalt roofs into gardens that soak up rain rather than send it into streets to pick up trash that is carried into nearby streams. Cities have cleaned streams, banned auto traffic from downtown areas and improved public transportation to reduce pollution. And cities have built mixed-use developments within walking distance of jobs.

Does Baltimore have a green concept?

What is it, and how can it be achieved?

What role do residents play, and what is the responsibility of government?

Urbanite recently gathered local experts for a discussion on greening the city. Everyone agreed that Baltimore should be more attentive to air-quality improvements, public health, the value of public transportation, economic revitalization and environmental education.

The group, however, disagreed about the best way to start to make Baltimore greener. IF and when a clear vision for the city is in place, group members say, it’s important to prioritize where eco-directed money is spent and the role of local government.

Here are the highlights of a recent conversation in the Urbanite offices, in reclaimed warehouse space just off the Jones Falls.


Urbanite’s “Eco-city” participants in order of appearance:

Guy Hager, director of Great Parks, Clean Streets, and Green Communities, a division of the Parks & People Foundation, a nonprofit group committed to improving life in Baltimore through educational and recreational programs and by improving parks and green spaces.


Gary Skulnik, head of Clean Energy Partnership, which promotes the use of clean energy sources in Maryland. Its mission, he says, is to “catch up” the state in the renewable energy arena.


Lee Jaslow of Resource Conservation Technology Inc., which has focused on energy conservation techniques and has branched out into other resources, such as rainwater collection and green roofs.


Karen Stupski, project supervisor of B’more Green, a job training and placement assistance program that prepares its clients for entry-level positions in environmental technology firms. It is a division of Civic Works, a nonprofit youth service corps that aims to turn abandoned lots into parks and gardens.


James Piper Bond, executive director of Living Classrooms Foundation, which provides hands-on maritime and environmental education programs for “at-risk” youth.



Urbanite: We want to talk about what Baltimore needs to become a world-class eco-city, but first we need to define eco-city.

Guy: Eco-cities have been designed to accommodate nature as much as possible and to incorporate natural systems in their building systems and infrastructure to mimic nature.

Urbanite: How can any city be designed as an eco-city? What about Baltimore?

Guy: We are, first of all, dealing with a legacy here in Baltimore — 300 years of human development — so we start with that and we have to find ways of restoring and mitigating some of the damage that’s been done. As we go forward with new things, we have an opportunity to do it better, maybe even do it right.

Urbanite: What does Baltimore need to become a world-class eco-city?

Gary: We have to recognize that we can’t change the past. We have to coalesce around a vision of what this city should be like in 25, 50,100 years. You would see a city where air quality is so good that you don’t have any asthma, a city where the public transportation is so advanced that people do not have to use their cars. But the thing that you need before you can do any of this stuff is agreement at the highest level of the political leadership that there’s a vision and a place where we want to go. Fifty years from now, do we still want the BRESCO municipal garbage incinerator at the heart of Baltimore? Most people would want to move towards clean, renewable energy resources.

Lee: If you can create the idea of where you’re going then you don’t have to specify exactly how to get there. Leave the process open and creative. You have to see the vision and then look for creative solutions that Baltimore needs. Those solutions need to be very cheap because there’s not much money available.

Karen: We need much better environmental education for all of the citizenry. It needs to be tied to economic revitalization. People in the city need jobs with liveable wages and there’s a great opportunity now for creating jobs doing environmental work.

Guy: We have significant poverty here and we’re not going to become a world class anything until poverty is dealt with in this city. We have the opportunity through rebuilding our ecosystems, improving our environment and creating jobs to give people who work here. We just have to find a resource to provide for that revenue and I think that’s doable.

Urbanite: What about transportation. How do you get people out of their cars?

Gary: The city has to lead the way by making its own rapid transit system even more environmentally friendly, which would give people even more incentive to ride buses or the Metro.

James: You have to have a superior public transportation system. Without one, people will complain, but they’ll stay in that gridlock because there isn’t an alternative. Baltimore lost its opportunity for a full public transportation system when it couldn’t solve the problems with urisdictional issues in the region, and primarily over racial concerns. Now it’s going to be very, very difficult to build a transportation system, and the federal government is no longer paying 99 percent of the cost.

Lee: Who actually is responsible for getting us from Point A to Point B? I don’t think government is that entity. In some ways government has to get out of the way and let people get to where we have to go.

Urbanite: How do we achieve [the political will to do] what we want to achieve?

Gary: Government clearly had a large role to play in establishing the unhealthy and unsustainable kind of industry and business world that we have. Government has a role to play in tipping the balance in favor of sustainable development. Tax incentives for renewable energy purchase just passed in the Maryland General Assembly. Business has a huge role. If businesses are not involved, if they’ve not bought into any of these concepts, then government can do all it wants and it’s not going to happen.

Urbanite: Does that go to creating jobs?

Gary: I can give you one example. In San Francisco, they passed a bond measure that is going to fund $100 million worth of clean energy. It’s mainly going to be solar and wind power. If Baltimore were to pass some kind of bond measure, where they would fund the development of solar panels on roofs, someone has to install the panels. You’re creating local jobs, cleaning up the air and getting the revenue back at the same time. It works.

Karen: Another area where a lot of jobs can be created is in environmental cleanup work. Right now, a big problem is all the abandoned urban lands and particularly brownfields, which are contaminated.

Lee: There are a lot of opportunities for urban agriculture. If you can spend less money on food, you have lower living costs and you don’t need the high income to support the family. You can produce food in the city and at the same time absorb water from runoff and cool down the temperature in the summer.

Urbanite: If you’re poor in Baltimore you probably rent. How do you get access to some kind of land to grow beets, sprouts?

James: The first part of it is looking to educate the next generation. There’s an after-school program called Baltimore

Urban Gardening, students working with kids who come from around the jail. They raised 3,000 seedlings in a greenhouse and they have gardens and a farmers’ market. How do we get the folks who are living here in tune with what we’re talking about and connect to them?

Guy: [At] Parks & People, we’re looking to get some funding where we can help to train some of the young adults in the program right around Hopkins and the EBDI [East Baltimore Development Inc.] to train them with horticultural degrees. There are plenty of jobs in natural resource organizations where they’re dying for more diverse populations among their employees. The U.S. Forest Service has full scholarship support for minorities that are not filled every year.

Urbanite: Where does the momentum come from?

Gary: It has to come from a committed group of activists. Any social movement in the United States has been done by a small group of committed activists. If you did a poll of people in Baltimore and asked them questions on the environment, I’d bet you’d find a very high score for environmental consciousness. But that doesn’t [yet] translate into political action.

Guy: We have data from surveys looking at attitudes about environmental concerns for the region, for the city and a representation of what you would call inner-city Baltimore. We can show that the level of interest and the concerns [are] a mixed picture. But it is not one of a lack of concern. It’s a question of how to mobilize that constituency and to better articulate these issues.

James: Parks become the environmental place for a lot of neighborhood folks to be. [Our] goal was to try to not only have a clean park but a two-block radius around the park and then to build up stewardship. People are concerned because of the personal health issues that they deal with, but, as it relates to policy, I don’t think there’s a connection there and I don’t think there’s a connection with our leadership.

Urbanite: What are the challenges we face ... to make this a more eco-friendly city?

Guy: Community leadership does not focus on this issue and they could. Too often, the community presents environmental concerns, public health, as an economic problem that will take away jobs. We know that environmental improvement does not cost jobs if done properly. So there has to be a dialogue created within this city to hash this issue out, come to a resolution.

Lee: There’s another approach to this. People learn best by seeing the demonstration of the way things could be. Demonstration projects like the city just did with some white roofs. People see how the roof temperature on the third floor drops 40 degrees in the summer and how you put people to work at the same time.

Urbanite: We have some liabilities that we want to turn into assets. How do we do that?

Lee: You can convert rooftops into useable space. You can convert vacant lots to urban gardens.

Guy: Where we have a lot of something, whether it’s vacant land, a lot of rooftops, the trick is to find what is the viable solution for changing that into an asset and where can you get the revenue to do it. We can do that with every problem that we have.

Urbanite: Can you identify strategic partners or political structures within the community that can contribute?

Guy: In Baltimore City’s structure, there is no one body responsible for the environment or natural resources. The city actually has a book called the Green Book that is a compilation of development regulations and there is nothing in there about environmental issues, nothing, not even implementing federal or state requirements. The first solution for a problem like this is to look at the law and if it’s missing something we need to go to the City Council and propose a legislative solution.

Lee: It would be nice to have some policies that got city agencies to let people have a little more creativity. For example, we’re very much involved in rainwater collection but it’s a real mess dealing with regulatory agencies when rainwater collection is in effect creating another plumbing system in the buildings and there are all kinds of rules.

James: What do other cities do? Do they have an environmental czar? Who is going to champion the cause? Just thinking of some parallels, the recently created Baltimore City Heritage Area Association is part of the city’s structure but it has a separate board. In a year they’re making great strides helping to market the historic and cultural attractions of the city.

Guy: Imagine if we had something like that on the environmental side.

Urbanite: Are other cities doing things that we ought to look at?

Gary: I think Chicago, besides San Francisco. They’re getting a large percentage of energy from renewable resources. They’re putting the gardens on the roof and they’re also putting in massive [amounts] of solar power and because of that, one of the solar companies located a plant in Illinois, so that brought jobs. It started with Mayor [Richard M.] Daley ... it seems to be working.

Guy: We’re working with a series of organizations like ours in Boston, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and D.C. called the Urban Ecology Collaborative and we’re trying to exchange information and improve the tool kit for the next generation of restoration. We should be building a political coalition to advocate the Congress for $2 billion a year for the next 20 years to restore our environment.


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