Ep 51: Urban Greening with Sandra Albro (Holden Forests & Gardens)

In this episode, we focus on how we can beautify our cities while delivering environmental benefits through a process called urban greening. Urban greening refers to public landscaping and urban forestry projects that create mutually beneficial relationships between city dwellers and their environments. We discuss urban greening’s impacts on human health, what listeners can do to promote urban greening, what successful green infrastructure projects look like, and which cities boast the most green space (Scott guessed wrong on which cities were at the top of the list, so we think you’ll be surprised too!). We’re joined by expert guest Sandra Albro, author of Vacant to Vibrant, a guidebook that explains how inexpensive green infrastructure projects can reduce stormwater runoff and pollution and simultaneously provide neighborhood amenities. In addition to being the author of Vacant to Vibrant and the Project Manager that oversaw the project, Sandra is also Director of Community Partnerships at Holden Forests & Gardens, Co-Chair for the Cleveland Tree Coalition, AND Project Manager for a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Urban Waters project (talk about impressive). Listeners everywhere are sure to enjoy this episode, hopefully as much as they enjoy their local green space. This episode is sponsored by Island Press and also Holden Forests & Gardens with generous support from the Great Lakes Protection Fund. ----------------------------- Sustainability Defined is the podcast that seeks to define sustainability, one concept (and bad joke) at a time. Hosted by Jay Siegel and Scott Breen. Each episode focuses on a single topic that helps push sustainability forward. We explain each topic with the help of an experienced pro, place it within our organizational tree, and help our listeners define what exactly sustainability is, episode by episode. We have divided our organizational tree into the following seven sectors: Energy Cities Natural Environment Transportation Business Policy Social Each episode is categorized under one of our sectors and visually depicted within our organizational tree. The more episodes we complete, the more the tree will visually define what exactly sustainability means. www.sustainabilitydefined.com