Architecture & Urban Planning

For millennia, Colorado's Yampa River Valley has followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change didn't occur until the last half of the 20th century. That's when the big ranches began to be broken up into small ranchettes and vacation-home lots, the kind of low-density exurban sprawl responsible for habitat fragmentation across the West.

On the surface, it would seem that keeping built healthcare facilities as environmentally friendly and healthy as possible would be a no-brainer; after all, if the first rule of medicine is to first, do no harm, the building itself should be free from harmful materials, and as “green” and sustainable as possible. Doesn’t it make sense that a building you visit to get healthy would itself be healthy?

Not long ago, a visitor came from Israel to Milwaukee to share his perspective on that country’s environmental movement. Daniel Orenstein is a Senior lecturer, in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Orenstein met WUWM Environmental reporter Susan Bence next to one of Milwaukee’s “greening spaces” – the Milwaukee River, and explained his philosophy. He believes environmental solutions can be attained by understanding that human social systems are linked to ecological systems.

Nutrient pollution isn't only a Gulf problem, said Glynnis Collins, the executive director of the Illinois-based Prairie Rivers Network, another group involved in the suits. She said nutrient-rich waters have led to toxic algae blooms in many places. "They can sicken people, pets and livestock," Collins said. "It's a worldwide story. We have to get a handle on it. It's crazy not to." Read the full story

"It's an incentive program for the private sector, to get them to invest in an area when it's probably cheaper to go somewhere else," said Ruth Steiner, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Florida and director of the school's Center for Health and the Built Environment. Read the story

Those rules were developed with public health in mind and aimed to limit the risks of transmitting animal-borne diseases to people, said Ruth Steiner, a professor of planning at the University of Florida. Cities need to keep that in mind as they hear from advocates of local agriculture, many of whom are worried about the quality and safety of their food, she said.

The study, "Connecting Natural Landscapes Using a Landscape Permeability Model to Prioritize Conservation Activities in the United States," appears in the journal Conservation Letters. Authors include David Theobald of CSU, Kenyon Fields and Michael Soulé from Wildlands Network and Sarah Reed from the Wildlife Conservation Society. Read the full story