Last week I was at a business meeting on the 24th floor of a building in downtown Rochester (NY). The meeting room had floor to ceiling windows. Rochester doesn’t have a lot of tall buildings so the view was unfettered and we could see miles with Lake Ontario to the north and the Bristol Hills to the south. The vista you see from high above Rochester is one of a green city in the literal sense. It looks more like a forest perforated by the occasional taller building than an urban area because we have a very active city forestry department and many large deciduous trees. It is a beautiful perspective that debunks this area’s reputation as having terrible weather- yes we get snowy winters but the spring, summer and fall (which are lengthening) are the best in the country due to a great balance of rainfall, median temps and a lack of extreme weather events.

The environmental greening of Rochester is another story. In comparison to many cities we are not in bad shape. Air pollution is limited to the occasional high ozone alert (there’s one out today due to the heat). This is a car city but traffic and commutes are minimal- the longest commute across the county should average less than a half hour. Eastman Kodak, once our largest employer, was also the single largest polluter in New York State due primarily to the fact that they were a chemical company. Now, with 60,000 less employees and digital technology, they are in the process of demolishing their old plants. They imploded two last week and have taken down nearly 40 buildings that could not be reused. Long term this means the Genesee river which neatly divides the city will be able to return to a more pristine state.

Given these advantages the city and county needs a comprehensive Green Region Plan. Gas is going to rise precipitously in the not too distant future as the oil wars heat up and destabilize world supplies even more. It is time for us to convert our perfect location and assets into a global example of the greening of a city.

Some aspects of a plan might include:
- A visionary overhaul of mass transit. We are building a state of the art bus terminal designed by Moshe Safdie downtown. The obvious next step is to create a light rail axis through the terminal that follows our major highways all the way out to the malls that conveniently mark our county borders. This would turn downtown back to a center city and eliminate much dependence on cars. Buses would serve as neighborhood connections.
- Move building codes to green standards and begin adding roof gardens to all commercial buildings
- We have an amazing bike/walk trail network, in part due to the Erie Canal that crosses the county. You can literally ride north/south and east/west across the entire county without riding on a road. This network is being greatly expanded with trails along the river from downtown to Lake Ontario and waterfront trails along the lakefront. Three season bicycle commuting is practical now.
- Energy. Wind farms are popping up in the outlying counties but are not practical in the urban areas. What we should be exploring are geothermal plants. These can be built on a small footprint, require no fuel, emit nothing and can run continuously forever (no storage issues). Theoretically one could power the downtown area. Why these plants are not being aggressively pursued is a mystery to me.

To be cont’d…