DETROIT | Green Building and Business Mapping by Detroit Green Map
Pitch
@DetroitGreenMap helps you reduce your pollution, save costs, and promote healthy communities! Grow #Detroit's Green Economy!
Description
Summary
Numerous projects, initiatives, businesses, and non-profits acknowledge and exist to address the challenge of increasing demand for green building and green living across different global communities. Detroit, Michigan, serves as a city that can model the growth of demand for sustainable products and services as it develops its own economy. Detroit, like other cities around the world, boasts numerous green sites and organizations around town; however, a problem that persists is connecting the public to such organizations to build out the ecosystem of green buildings and businesses that are sometimes in isolation of each other.
The Detroit Green Map is an online resource that the public can use to find businesses, projects, or other city sights that help reduce pollution, save on costs, and promote healthier communities. The map launched on July 23. The link is: detroitgreenmap.com.
The Detroit Green Map project is a collaboration between the Detroit Green Skills Alliance (DGSA) and the US Green Building Council's Detroit Regional Chapter Emerging Professionals group (USGBC DRC EP). The goal of Detroit Green Map is to connect the public to local businesses and nonprofits that demonstrate a commitment to environmentally sustainable and socially equitable initiatives. We believe that increased communication about how to visit and support these organizations can help establish Detroit as a premier example of the Green Economy.
The Detroit Green Map aims to flourish and catalyze green building and business growth in the city, such that consumers will demand more green products in support of green initiatives in town. The Map will not only serve as a mapping platform, but an online community for tours, e-commerce, meetups, and event planning. By showcasing green activities and connecting people, green buildings and businesses, green mapping can bring low-cost marketing and grow awareness among the public and change consumer habits.
Category of the action
Mitigation/Adaptation, Changing public attitudes about climate change
What actions do you propose?
Connecting new and existing businesses with new consumers forms an essential aspect of developing green practices and growing demand for green businesses or buildings. Many such initiatives exist in isolation of each other, vying for public demand; however, by connecting businesses with consumers, and growing the ecosystem for such businesses in a way that engages community members, provides low cost business development resources, and helps the public explore cities through a new lens.
The Detroit Green Map is a collaboration between the Detroit Green Skills Alliance and the US Green Building Council Detroit Regional Chapter. Volunteers currently develop, coordinate, and maintain mapping resources. Both organizations exists to support green and socially responsible businesses, as well as to grow green communities in the region of southeast Michigan.
The Map will foster encouragement of hiring local Detroiters to build economic incentives for socially responsible businesses that can address issues of climate change by localizing employment near points of residence. New policies associated with the Map can be drafted based on stronger, unified building sector and commercial fronts that can lobby or propose policy based on mutual interests and needs. Behavioral norms can change due to changes in consumer habits. Concentrating purchases, promoting businesses in green building, and encouraging local hiring will minimize carbon footprints associated with urban sprawl of employment and purchases made in the suburbs, and offer low-cost marketing to new businesses attempting to grow with social responsibility and sustainability at their core. Furthermore, existing businesses that wish to green their practices or buildings will be able to connect with each other based on online resources and in-person community generated from Green Map activity.
The Green Map team follows a multi-pronged strategy to connect the more mainstream consumer with Detroit Green Map information. The team recognizes that some people are less interested in green and more interested in buying local Detroit products or connecting to the culture/communities of Detroit or contributing to Detroit's community building and economic growth. Therefore, receipt of funds can be used to purchase multiple domain names that will direct people to the map but with a different initial scan or URL that will attract additional groups of consumers not necessarily oriented to "green" but oriented to Detroit.
The team would also use the funds to hire a coordinator for social marketing and publicity so that the project can generate a more effective buzz for and larger engagement of people not only in the metro Detroit area but also nationally. The project already has commitment from a marketing strategy course of 40 students at Wayne State University. These students will also be working on outreach and publicity for the map. Additionally, the marketing strategy class will be delving into research on what other green maps have learned for ready application in Detroit.
Finally, the Detroit Green Map team is also in direct contact with the originator of the Open Green Map project (opengreenmap.com), a platform present in over 65 countries and 900 communities. The founder and directer of opengreenmap.com has given us and continues to give us insight about how to learn from the lessons of these other maps that we can apply in turn to Detroit's Green Map project -- a project unique to Detroit's singular opportunities and emphasizing green building and green community living through its roll out.
Who will take these actions?
The key actors from business are represented by the Detroit Green Skills Alliance. Green building actors are represented by the US Green Building Council's Detroit Regional Chapter, which also references the Green Building Information Gateway (gbig.org) for green building mapping. Rather than start from scratch, the Detroit Green Map relies on the existing and robust GBIG platform for green building mapping.
Volunteers from both organizations represent numerous local green businesses or corporations; however, in time, funding is desired to increase the technical capabilities of the map and support more business and building organization networking events to promote green education and sustainability awareness. Funding will also support the hire of a project coordinator to focus on marketing, design, and web development of the map.
A class of 40 Wayne State University students has also committed to supporting map development over 2014-2015.
Where will these actions be taken?
Currently, the Detroit Green Map will launch in Detroit, Michigan; however, through the network of USGBC chapters and, specifically, Emerging Professionals committees, the platform and program model can be scaled across the United States.
How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?
Through use of the green map, the concentration of businesses for Detroiters to visit to will be co-located within city limits, reducing mobile emissions and the carbon footprint associated with personal vehicle use to an approximately eight mile radius from downtown Detroit from the current suburban sprawl that reaches approximately 30 miles from downtown Detroit. Furthermore, encouraging renewable energy use or community renewable energy assets will minimize emissions associated with building use in the city. Many green energy businesses exist in the city, yet have limited clientele within city limits. (Precise emissions calculations are going to be evaluated as a project extension of the Detroit Green Map.)
What are other key benefits?
Other key benefits include the opportunity to raise awareness around water conservation and responsible water use. Because Detroit is situated in the Great Lakes Region, a scalable Green Map model through USGBC has the opportunity to encourage exploration of the water-energy nexus from the region hosting the country's largest source of freshwater by embedding water use awareness in Green Map development. In Detroit where water access is a highly relevant and crucial social justice issue, a focus on water is essential for an informed, healthy, and sustainable city development plan.
Furthermore, the Green Map is focused on hiring Detroiters for local, Detroit-based jobs. Hence, while climate change adaptation forms an integral part of the Detroit Green Map's environmental mission, social justice is also at the root of the Detroit Green Map initiative. The Green Map presents a low-cost, low-barrier to entry resource for new businesses seeking to operate with green principles at their core/
What are the proposal’s costs?
The costs are currently minimal; the effort is built on volunteer hours and has not required external support to date. However, a potential negative side effect could be "burnout" of volunteers and, also, a soft launch that engages numerous businesses could disenchant or disillusion businesses if the Detroit Green Map is not successful at the onset. A project that fails at launch that draws numerous city resources could deter stakeholders from future support if their familiarity with such initiatives is low. To mitigate these potential negative side effects, however, the Green Map team meets regularly to develop long-term solutions and strategies to maintain ongoing and growing awareness around the Green Map and Detroit green businesses, buildings, and projects.
Time line
July 2014: Detroit Green Map Launch
5-15 years: Build a comprehensive map of green businesses/buildings in the region; connect individuals to businesses and encourage community building around green initiatives
15 - 50 years: Through a strong ecosystem of green businesses and buildings, encourage policy making around expedited green business and building licensing/permitting and economic development. Prioritize sustainability initiatives over economic development that does not foster Triple Bottom Line thinking.
50 - 100 years: A net-zero, localized green economy that renders the Detroit Green Map obsolete.
By:
Detroit Green Map
