Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Inspiration from Greensburg and a place to rent

A lot of focus has been on getting ready for the Community Expo and Workshop at the Rec Reserve on Sunday. John Burgess has been working with Nigel Bell and the CSIRO experts on putting together an Agenda.

I met with the CEO of Vicurban, Pru Sanderson and the Urban Design Director, Daniel Khong. Vicurban are a State Government body that does developments on land released by the State Government. They have done many new developments as well as worked with existing communities. They have also done some leading edge sustainability (water, renewable energy, energy efficient design) and communications (Fibre to the home, in layman's terms super fast cable) work in communities. They are keen to offer their assistance in our planning once the community decides on a path ahead.

Pru also gave me a copy of the recovery plan of a town called Greensburg, Kansas, which lost 11 lives and 961 homes in a tornado in May 2007. The community decided it wanted to rebuild as a green town and take the disaster as an opportunity. I have been researching Greensburg online this evening and there is a lot we could learn from them. They also had documentaries recording the process which can be seen online on The Sundance Channel. Check out the recovery plan or you can find a good overview of things at the Greensburg website.

I have also been told there is a 4 bedroom house available for rent in Riverside. If you want more detail email carahealth@hotmail.com.

2 comments:

  1. Hello.. I am a sixth generation Greensburg resident, and I'd like to thank you for the links.
    I work for Greensburg GreenTown, a non-profit organization in Greensburg that helps people learn about green building and green, sustainable living. I'd like to invite you to come see our website, greensburggreentown.org and see all that we are doing!

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  2. thanks I will, we are starting on the journey that you have been through and it is really pleasing to know that another small rural community has been able to forge the path successfully.

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