Greening Your Downtown

On November 3 and 4, the Virginia Downtown Development Association (VDDA) hosted their annual conference, this year focusing on sustainability in a traditional downtown environment. The conference was held in Charlottesville, where the 40 participants were able to witness first-hand the benefits of employing “green” development strategies.

Charlottesville is committed to having a green downtown by 2025. At the conference, the Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP) presented several strategies that Charlottesville is employing to make its vision of a sustainable downtown a reality. For example, the innovative City Hall and Police Building Green Rooftop Project, in which conventional rooftops are replaced with large gardens, has been highly successful in reducing stormwater runoff and pollution while also reducing cooling costs in the summer.

How is your community “going green?”

Visit the Virginia Municipal League’s Go Green Virginia website to learn about strategies incorporated in the Green government challenge.

Designated VMS communities are also encouraged to fill out the National Trust Main Street Sustainability Survey by November 17 to help shape national strategies and  for a chance to win a flip video camera.

The new normal

Before you get too excited about the coming recovery, have you heard about the “new normal?” 

The “new normal” is the term that many have been using for economic growth that is slower than what we became accustomed to over the past decade or so.  Doug Dachille, of First Principles Capital Management, says in this clip from CNBC that the “new normal” is really the “old normal.”  His position is that the economy really only grows in great bounds when technology increases productivity in a dramatic fashion.  That happened in the 1990′s, and the growth in the 2000′s was not based on “real growth” but by financial machinations, according to Dachille.  In statistical terms this is called “regression to the mean,” but in layman’s terms we can just call it average. 

The video is informational throughout, but the pertinant part starts at about 3:30 and runs about two and half minutes.