Make my city greener, leaner and greater by...
Citizens in Hazel Park, Southgate and Ypsilanti are partnering with their city governments to create local climate action plans. Through a yearlong public planning process, these cities are asking residents for their ideas to reduce greenhouse emissions, improve environmental quality, enhance quality of life, and save energy and money. The final climate action plans will strategically identify and prioritize sustainable strategies in order to achieve community goals.
This site is a supplement to our public meetings and allows residents from across the three cities to share ideas. For more information on how to get involved in person or to see the information we’ve collected so far, follow this link.
How would you make your community greener, leaner and greater? Share your ideas below!
27 results found
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More bike lanes and bike-safe streets!
There are many areas (like the Hamilton Rd. to Huron St overpass over 94) in Ypsilanti that are still very un-friendly towards bikes. Lots of these dangerous areas lead to important places in our community (like the Whittaker Rd Library branch, for instance). If we want to make biking a viable primary transportation option, we need to not only finish the Border to Border trail, which is great, but make some of our other main roads more bike-safe.
30 votes -
provide express bus service between Ypsi and Ann Arbor
Many of my friends in Ypsi work in Ann Arbor, either downtown or at the U; they've said they would take the bus, but it takes too long. A commuter-oriented express line could attract riders who won't take a regular service bus.
27 votes -
pilot some community level alternative energy micro-grids with a variety of structures ~ at least one that would be residential co-op.
"A microgrid is a localized grouping of electricity generation, energy storage, and loads that normally operates connected to a traditional centralized grid (macrogrid). This single point of common coupling with the macrogrid can be disconnected. The microgrid can then function autonomously.[8] Generation and loads in a microgrid are usually interconnected at low voltage. From the point of view of the grid operator, a connected microgrid can be controlled as if it was one entity. Microgrid generation resources can include fuel cells, wind, solar, or other energy sources. The multiple dispersed generation sources and ability to isolate the microgrid from a…
20 votes -
Partner with public and private schools to build stewardship education and recognition of the empowerment available thru engaging
Revitalizing anything, be it your body or your block requires active participation, a serious antidote to the apathy, depression and woes of all sorts (economic, educational, political, environmental, etc) that plague our culture.
By bringing joyful meaningful activity, be it weeding a garden, community mapping or building model wind turbines - involving young people with the development of their place is essential to forming effective solutions.
I am not quite singularly sure how this would work, be it partnering with existing school events or running new ones...?19 votes -
13 votes
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Get city leaders and employees visibly active on climate change issues.
City leaders should attend all events geared to a more sustainable Ypsilanti, and encourage others to attend. Examples: Bike Ypsi rides, Tour de Fresh, community garden events, Annual Solar Tour, Sustainability Film Series, etc.
12 votes -
Create a "green" rental certification program to encourage energy-efficient improvements.
Ypsi has a large rental population, many who are look for low energy bills and/or sustainability minded housing (on-site composting, gardening, clotheslines, rain barrels, etc). Creating a system to allow landlords to gain green certification, market it easily through various websites or other media, and allow renters to seek out and prefer it, could help push less likely landlords to make improvements to attract good tenants, and let sustainability minded renters have some positive influence on the rental housing market.
12 votes -
Implement Kinetic Energy (human powered) Programs and Funding
Funding for clean green energy is important because right now everyone wants energy independence but can't afford 30-40,000 to make it happen. I would add to this, that the solar panels of today are tomorrows hazardous waste. They contain cadmium, a known carcinogen. Some companies also use nitrogen triflouride, a potent greenhouse gas. SVTC (Silicone Valley Toxics Coalition) estimates that 1.5 billion pounds of solar panel waste containing 2 million pounds of lead and 600,000 pounds of cadmium will be disposed of in California alone. So solar panels are not the solution yet.
A very under promoted technology is Kinetic…
9 votes -
Composting in your back yard it's easy. Saves money, and produces great top soil for your garden
Composting is just collecting kitchen scraps and leaves and putting them in a pile . Then Mother Nature does the work of turning it back into soil. Composting can be done with almost no effort. Just add equal amounts of kitchen waste and leaves or ( cardboard scrap) in summer.
We save in garbage fee and have a green city.9 votes -
Facilitate creation of worker owned co-op for profit businesses, perhaps manufacturing solar panels or farming.
See these recent YES! Magazine article for the inspiration: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/worker-co-ops-green-and-just-jobs-you-can-own
and
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/clevelands-worker-owned-boom8 votes -
get a flock of sheep
let's sell the city's lawnmowers and instead get some sheep and a moveable fence. Rotate the sheep around the parks to keep the grass short. At the end of the season, sell the sheep for meat. Repeat annually.
7 votes -
impliment funding for wind or solar energy in low income neighborhoods .
encourage local businesses ,organizations, and local government to supply a fund available to low income families to install solar or wind energy in their homes or neighborhoods .it will pay for itself because the money that they save on energy will go back into and stimulate the local economy. Thus giving people that dont have the funds opportunity to incorporate these green energies into their home
7 votes -
Partner with SMART or another carpooling organization to transport our high school students.
Families all of the City of Southgate were greatly impacted by the loss of buses and now our children are indivudually driven to the schools. If there were bus routes or carpooling opportunities availalbe this would save multiple families in the same neighborhoods driving to the same schools to drop off and pick up their kids.
7 votes -
Have a community-wide recycling contest!
Shelley O'Brien of Hazel Park suggested this during our meeting today. She suggested that different sectors or parts of the city compete to recycle the most. We should pair this with info about how much money they're saving the city, how much good they're doing for the environment, per unit recycled.
6 votes -
Put our roads on a diet.
Ypsilanti is cut into pieces by Washtenaw/Cross/Hamilton/Huron, two-to-four lane highways that are dangerous if not impossible to cross on foot (and really, really ugly). These roads can be reduced to one-to-two lanes, with adequate parking, complete bike lanes, pedestrian facilities, and other traffic calming measures to bring the average speed down and make these roads usable/crossable by all people, not to mention more beautiful.
5 votes -
Create a community awards program for energy efficiency
Give public recognition to businesses that document individual energy-saving improvements.
5 votes -
Encourage front/back yard gardens.
By creating a visible garden you are creating a platform to get to know your neighbors and members of your community. Offering extra vegetables and or fruits from an over abundance your garden will produce can help your neighbors. Why should we be investing in weed killers and "yard" fertilizer when a garden seems so much smarter!
4 votes -
Offer Micro-grants and/or Micro-loans to people (individuals or groups) for direct, positive change.
Often, the people who would benefit most from having a bicycle (and necessary accessories), tools, a garden, trees, a sewing machine, small business, etc., are stuck in a cycle of living paycheck to paycheck, and just need a little boost to help them break free of unsustainable living.
3 votes -
Use earth and environmentally friendly cleaning products, such as Shaklee. You could actually see if the Teen program has a 501c3 and get
a free website setup and also help an organization at the same time. Here is a website to check out the cleaning products... www.hkirshman.myshaklee.com there are several videos on that site you can look at and get more information on it.
3 votes -
Offer a bus route between the Ypsilanti Township and the City
We don't have a bus-route in the Township because AATA owns the Ypsilanti Bus route. There are allot of residents in the township that would spend more time downtown if they could get a bus-ride. There also is a Kroeger shopping center and a Library on Whittaker that could be used as bus-stops. I know I would save allot on gas if I didn't have to drive all the way down to the transit center (which by the way has gotten rid of the majority of their free parking spaces)! Why cant we have our own bus route?
3 votes
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