Nadine Bopp led a walking tour through the West Rogers Park neighborhood on a recent January afternoon, but the group trudging along the slushy sidewalks behind her was not sightseeing. The 15 students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago met their instructor at the busy corner of Western and Devon Avenues, the heart of the city's Little India enclave, with a different mission. Bopp, an adjunct professor at the SAIC, and her class were working on the Green Map Project, part of a liberal arts course on urban issues, sustainability and mapmaking.
In the course of a week, the students would break into smaller groups to canvass the neighborhood, documenting schools, mosques, dry cleaners and community centers, with particular attention to those with sustainable design or features. They then took the data into the classroom and designed a map of the neighborhood; 23 of the city's 90-plus neighborhoods have been covered by students in Bopp's classes. "This is a laboratory class for the study of environmental science and sustainable urban planning," Bopp said in an e-mail. "It shows how ecology, economy and equity are incorporated (or not)into the urban fabric."
The class is modeled after an international Green Map System project begun in 1995 and active in 400 cities, villages and neighborhoods in 50 countries, according to its Web site, Greenmaps.org. Bopp's course description explains that the term "sustainable living" represents a shift from a fossil-fuel-based economy to one based on renewable energy. The student-produced maps use a universal icon system -- such as a leaf with an electric plug for eco-friendly products and a sun surrounded by spikes for a solar energy site to highlight a community's natural, cultural and sustainable resources.
The goal is to promote participation in sustainable community development, using mapmaking as the medium. The maps then act as inventories for decision-making by urban planners, and as practical guides for residents and tourists. Doug Widener, executive director of the U.S. Green Building Council's Chicago Chapter, is familiar with efforts to document green choices. Though only 36 of Chicago's more than 500,000 residential and commercial buildings meet the council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, another 300 or so are in the pipeline waiting to be certified, he said. "Cities bigger than us are facing the [green] challenge," Widener said, "but I think we are on the right track. The whole city has a comprehensive strategy, across all departments."
Bopp learned of the Green Map System from an article in Metropolis Magazine, a New York-based publication focusing on architecture, design, planning and preservation, in 1997. The story was about a green map of New York City, created for a 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro. When Bopp discovered there were no similar maps of Chicago, she began a pilot program at DePaul University, where she also teaches. Soon she realized that the project was better suited to art students, who could create maps while investigating sustainability. The course was introduced at SAIC in the winter of 2000.
Marisa Holmes, an SAIC film major from Worthington, Ohio, said she was drawn to the class because she was interested in environmental justice. "The Green Map Project encourages students to connect to communities and begin a conversation on sustainable living," Holmes said. "A sustainable world is necessary for our survival. Far too often we forget how individual actions affect society," she said.
The map project also fits in with Mayor Richard Daley's green initiatives. In November, Chicago joined the Clinton Foundation's Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, aimed at helping owners modernize thei
Source: ChicagoTribune.com