by iSpit

In Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s

2008 inaugural address, he announced his goal to make the city the “greenest” in the country by 2015. Nutter quickly created an Office of Sustainability and later instituted Katherine Gajewski as director.
I spoke with Gajewski recently about how far the plan has come — and what more needs to be done in order for Philadelphia to reach its ambitious goal.
Why is the “greenest city in the country” goal so important to Philadelphia?
We looked at what the benefits would be of a really aggressive sustainability plan. It was going to help position Philadelphia for what we think is an impending clean energy economy in the United States. It was going to help prepare our workforce, our economy, our jobs base. It was going to look at neighborhood greening in a way we thought had multiple positive impacts. At this time of budget constraints and concessions, we were finding a lot of value added and savings to be found in looking at resource conservation. It made a lot of sense.
On top of that, we put out this goal of being the greenest city. It was really inspiring to Philadelphians that we could think big and deliver. Cities like Philadelphia are uniquely and inherently sustainable. We have dense, walkable neighborhoods. We have transit. We have a 9,200-acre park system. These are the things you can’t build for anymore. The bones of Philadelphia are inherently green, so how do we take that and modernize it?
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