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Young World
How green is the Apple
SOMA BASU
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While one apple may spoil the soil, one green apple can start a trend. Green volunteers in New York are re-charting their city.
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From the ashes... envisaging a green tomorrow.
As the city begins its second year of mourning, it is also rebuilding itself. A silent brigade of "green volunteers" in New York has been recharting their city. Interestingly, New York was the first city in the world to adopt "green maps" as an instrument of sustainable development. Today amid ashes and tears, it is even more determined to retain its dominance by identifying all blighted areas as opportunity sites where new green space can be cultivated.
Green map is a part of the award winning global Green Map System (GMS) — "a globally local system" — that encourages ordinary citizens to be environmentally smart and discover naturally and culturally significant places in and around their city.
NY created the world's first green map in 1992, identifying 143 such sites. Today, 100 cities spread over 35 countries on six continents, which include 66 capital cities, are a part of this endearing effort. Pune is the only Indian city that figures in this list.
Tractor-trailers and debris, ambulances sirens and fire control equipment, the cacophony of teeming people and their wails, the soot and the burning stench are gone from the WTC. What remains are flowers, candles, messages and memories, a united struggle and a redevelopment plan for WTC likely to be unveiled in the winter of 2003. And they point towards a determination to "revitalise the big apple".
A decade ago, the founder-director of GMS, Wendy Brawer, found it extremely difficult to convince and stimulate people on the "living language of icons". The catchline for NY is "how green is the big apple — while one apple may spoil the soil, one green apple can start a trend". Since an environmentally-aware lifestyle is the order of the day, volunteers are seriously on the hunt for ecologically significant places that will help them overcome the grief that entered many homes last year.
"In green map making, `seeing' a community means being aware of its rhythms of growth and decay, of seasonal transformation in the natural and built environment, of flora and fauna and of what sustains or threatens life. It means asking — is this community healthy enough and how can I improve and sustain life in the place that I live," said Ms. Brawer.
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