Christine Knapp is eastern Pennsylvania outreach coordinator of PennFuture
Mayor Nutter fulfilled an important campaign pledge with his appointment last week of Mark Alan Hughes as Philadelphia's first sustainability director.
While the mayor and his administration have made it clear that sustainability is a top priority, a point person to lead and coordinate these efforts is absolutely critical to its success.
Hughes is a senior fellow in the University of Pennsylvania's Fox Leadership Program. His experience in urban-policy development as well as his proven ability to work with a broad spectrum of groups will aid him as he works to put Philadelphia on the national map as a green city.
The Next Great City coalition, which now includes almost 100 organizations, first put sustainability issues on the map during the mayoral race by releasing a commonsense, cost-effective environmental agenda in January 2007.
The following month, the coalition hosted the first issues forum, attended by all of the Democratic candidates. As a result, the 2007 mayoral race was the greenest in Philadelphia history and helped to focus attention on important issues such as energy conservation, air quality, recycling and parks.
Much progress has already been made. Single-stream recycling was expanded again and will be citywide by July. The Zoning Code Commission is meeting and will make recommendations to update the city's outdated rules on land use and development. The budget proposed by Nutter provides funding for parks and trees.
And more than ever, both residents and businesses are seeking ways to be part of the green movement.
But to truly fulfill the mayor's goal of becoming the "greenest city in America," significant work must be done.
Philadelphia still hasn't implemented many of the Next Great City recommendations, such as working to reduce diesel emissions from city trucks, which exacerbate asthma rates; preventing sewage backups and flooding, which cause property damage and public health problems; opening the riverfronts to the public and reconnecting them with bordering neighborhoods; cleaning and greening vacant lots to attract development and stabilize communities; improving transit stops to be safer and more user-friendly; and being smarter about energy use by buying or generating renewable energy and building energy-efficient buildings.
We also must make sure the progress made on recycling, zoning, and parks and trees is the beginning, not the end.
