I'm writing with my green dream in mind today. And channeling to find out who I know helps me connect with Mackenzie Scott and other folks on the green progressive side to seed my dream.
I have had a recurring vision of turning Seattle's Aurora Ave North from Seattle Center to Green Lake into a 5.6 mile long park.
Highlights of this dream scene: parks, food forests, green sponge and abundant social housing so everyone can live in Seattle.
This dream is meant to be a model for other parts of Seattle.
Miles of green space in a concrete gash that was carved out of land in 1930's.
Designing social housing and transit stations at urban villages in
Lower Queen Anne neighborhood
Fremont
Wallingford
Green Lake and adjacent to Greenwood
Prioritizing social housing at transit stations to create a cross class community hub
Designing food forests, P Patches and reforesting the highway with community's help.
Transit, bike and pedestrian paths
Build a new Green Lake Aquatics & Community Center where Green Lake and Aurora Ave intersect today with room around the community center for housing, retail and connections to and from Green Lake and Greenwood.
The community and aquatics center is the crown jewel of the park extending south to Seattle Center, and integrates our neighborhood with affordable low density social housing, social services, and room for different classes to mix. The community center will reconnect Green Lake with the Greenwood neighborhood, creating new land use west of the community center and a beautiful public space that connects Green Lake to the zoo and Woodland Park.
Climate awareness: create a community process that encourages citizens to find and plant climate tolerant species of trees, shrubs, food sources and grasses that will weather the spikes in temperature and absorb the extra rain that is coming.
The focus of this project is to create a vision for how we respond to climate with abundance instead of scarcity, and to showcase restoration of our flora and fauna so there is more sponge and cooler landscapes in our beautiful city. Here are 6 examples around the world.
What I want to add to the designs so far are social housing in denser transit areas to break up the class war that is turning Seattle and other cities into enclaves for the rich and homeless with no affordable housing for low income, seniors, middle class families like our firemen, police, librarians and teachers. We already own the highway, so the cost of land should be low.
Phase1:
Interpretive poster with dream scene painted illustrating flora and fauna, potential housing and transit mix with trees and other plants, some of the flora and fauna to expect in the next 30-60 years. I'm thinking of creating a scene similar to what Suzanne Duranceau painted for Good Nature Publishing's NW Hedgerows poster to show riparian buffers to help farmers in western Washington and Oregon imagine living fences to protect salmon habitat.
Let's design a great city that creates a model for honoring planetary boundaries that science has told us we have eclipsed at our peril.
Indigenous names for species and historic references for where tribes lived and how they used the land.
Phase in community meetings to incorporate ideas on how to grow the dream into a park.
Work with landscape designers and architects from around the world to showcase best case architecture.
Make the focus of our work together to look forward 7 generations.
Have fun! Let's use the Reforesting Aurora Ave N. project as a teaching tool for other streets in Seattle that are good fits for adding abundant social housing, park like amenities IN Streets instead of on the sides of streets.
Find out how to get Aurora Ave. donated to City of Seattle so we don't have to waste money buying it.
Do you know Mackenzie Scott? If you have $25,000 to $100,000 you would like to give to this dream, let me know.
Scott created Yield to focus her radical notion of giving, and I love her open hearted call to action and understanding the nature of generosity and social health as our real wealth.
I thought Scott would like this 7 generations idea, and wanted to offer to trade coaching her on writing and walks around Green Lake for some seed money for my green dream to help hire artists, landscape designers and architects with drafts. Thanks for any help!
Scott has been magnificent in giving away her fortune. This side of a wealth tax, she is a great role model of infectious generosity for all the billionaire hoarders without borders, contributing to a greener more just world, helping women, healthcare and education projects for our brothers and sisters that are not as well off.
If you've read this far and wonder what I'm thinking, I'll tell you. I started Good Nature Publishing in 1995 back when email was just starting. And I got a purchase order from the Forest Service for 2000 copies of the NW Conifers poster. That poster field guide launched my small green business just by asking people I didn't know if they'd like to invest in my dream.
I want to create an Emerald City here in Seattle that is a living breathing response to the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse we're in the midst of and show people ideas for a greener more just world that restores ecosystems at the same time it meets our needs for shelter from the climate storm rewilding cities.
Inspiration for this project comes from New York City's Highline, this cool project in China and designers like Rasmus Astrup.
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