Green infrastructure...public assets

Green infrastructure? Flickr photo by Liz Hurley.

Today's USA Today reports in "Some cities are finding money does grow on trees," that "Cities are starting to treat trees less as decoration and more like public utilities now that they can calculate how much money trees save by cutting air pollution, storm runoff and energy costs."

Relatedly, instead of selling off, piecemeal, municipal assets such as buildings, shouldn't we come together as a community and decide how we want our city to be going forward, and what assets we have, what we need, and how to utilize such assets to enhance and extend our quality of life?

Old Bruce School at Kenyon Street and Sherman Avenue. Up for declaration as surplus property...

As long as each government agency, particularly the DC Public Schools, the DC Libraries, and the Parks and Recreation Department see their "asset portfolio" as (1) not being ultimately owned and directed by the citizens; (2) having little connection to other municipal assets; and (3) use doesn't need to be coordinated with meta-objectives such as "enhancing the community's capacity to learn, grow, and apply knowledge" well then it's pretty easy to sell off properties and to continue to underutilize such assets.

Common Assets is a national organization dealing with some of these issues. The website isn't very informative, but the concept is important and needs to be applied at a more micro level.