CitiesGoGreen - October 2008 - (Page 22) Highlights of Fayetteville’s accomplishments since Mayor Coody took office: • All city traffic lights are now retrofitted with LED lighting, and the city is currently testing LED applications for street lights. • Energy audits, employee education initiatives and technology upgrades have resulted in a 20% energy savings, which could increase to 35% when upgrades are completed. • The city Wastewater Division implemented water reuse systems to reduce water consumption and installed a distributed generation system, achieving substantial cost and energy savings. • Fayetteville’s waste-recycling “Pay -As-You-Throw” program diverted 48% of residential waste and 20% of total waste from the landfill. • The Fayetteville Fleet Division is a leader in implementing alternative energy sources, including biodiesel, and has committed to purchasing one of the first hybrid garbage vehicles. • The city’s Tree Preservation and Protection Ordinance led to a 30% canopy coverage within the city, improving air quality and sequestering 330,000 tons of carbon annually. • In 2007, Fayetteville hired the first sustainability coordinator in the state of Arkansas. • As part of its City Plan 2025, Fayetteville transformed an old railway line into an award-winning trail system, enabling residents to bike or walk extensively around the city. • Fayetteville is also partnering with the University of Arkansas and Wal-Mart (headquartered in Bentonville) to raise awareness of sustainability in Northwest Arkansas. walk to the store, to church, or to school, the planning commission, and then it will so that you are not forced into driving a come up before the city council. At that car to get there, burning fossil fuel, wast- point, if three or four neighbors come up ing your time in traffic, and clogging the and say, ‘Well, I don’t care if this conforms streets.” That’s just what The status quo is not sustainable. It’s gotten us into this Fayetteville has done with its mess, and maintaining the status quo is not going to get award-winning City us out of this mess. Plus, we can have a better lifestyle Plan 2025, a comprehensive land- and a better quality of life by living more sustainability. use plan adopted by the city council in 2006. The inspiration for the plan came from Coody’s expe- to the city plan, I don’t care if it’s good rience attending the Mayor’s Institute on for the long-term health of the planet City Design, an educational program for and the city, I don’t want it next to my mayors in city design and urban develop- house’—at that point, the City Council ment. “Every mayor should go through it,” can sometimes be in the position of votCoody said. “That’s where I learned that ing against a first-class development, just you can actually master plan your cities, to appease a couple of angry neighbors. and grow yourself out of problems that And that is a problem. Because a developyou grew your way into.” His first step was ment has permanence—it sets the stage to implement a downtown master plan. for our long-term growth, for the city that The city brought in Dover Kohl, a town will be here long after we’re gone. People planning organization specializing in are temporary—they move, they go on to designing livable communities. To help, do various other things with their lives. Dover Kohl conducted an open plan- And sometimes, we will let a temporary ning process in 2004 to identify the ideas, problem thwart a permanent solution.” needs and concerns of the community. “They did an excel- It’s not just the government, it’s not just the citizens, it’s lent job showing not just business—all of us share this atmosphere, and the public what can happen, how it can it’s important for all of us to participate in the resolution look, and getting of these issues. the public’s input,” said Coody. “We The solution to that problem lies in ended up with a handcrafted design for how we want our downtown to function. a process of education, for citizens and It was so successful, and so well-received council members alike. Both need to unby the public, that we brought Dover Kohl derstand the importance of the long-term in again and used the same process to do plan, and choose to align themselves with our city-wide 2025 plan, which used the it for the long-term benefit of the community. The city is now planning to focus same principles.” It hasn’t all been plain sailing, however. on reminding citizens that everyone has a Developing an impressive city plan, even role in creating a sustainable lifestyle and an award-winning one, is one thing; put- that the benefits can be very direct. “We’ve ting it into practice brings its own chal- shown that not only is it the right thing to lenges, as Fayetteville discovered. “Some- do, it’s a money-saving thing to do, in adtimes, a developer will come in and take dition to being good for all of Earth and our plans, and the ordinances that try the future generations,” Coody said. “I to promote those plans, and develop a think a lot of folks want to do things but project that meets or even exceeds the aren’t quite sure what to do. And so the principles of the plan,” Coody explained. next thing we need to do is start talking “And they’ll be so happy they are doing to the public and the businesses about this really cool mixed-use development how we can help them help themselves. that has high livability, high quality of life, It’s just one step after the other.” The city council recently passed an oreverything just like we wanted. They’ll go through the planning staff, and then dinance requiring all newly-constructed October 2008 22 http://www.micd.org http://www.micd.org http://www.doverkohl.com/ http://citiesgogreen.com
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