The Plotting o' the Green

The new "green maps" track environmental landmarks with easy-to-read icons

By Ruth Eckdish Knack, AICP

Reprinted from Planning magazine, © 2001 by the American Planning Association

It's not easy to be an environmentalist in an era of megamansions and SUVs. That makes tools like the popular green maps all the more valuable. The maps are a tribute to the work of Ian McHarg, who died this spring, leaving a legacy of faith in the power of mapping to show what's wrong and what's right with the world.


Tracing the route

Perhaps the latest green map was released last month in Santa Monica, but more than 100 communities worldwide have their own versions. Their aim is the same: to identify good, green places (and a few problems) and to educate local residents about environmental issues.

New Yorker Wendy Brawer created the first green map-or at least the first to go by that name. Originally from Detroit and an artist by training, Brawer calls herself an "eco-designer." In 1992, she became involved with meetings held in New York to prepare for the United Nations Earth Summit, which was to take place in Rio.

"I started thinking about ways to tell the visitors to New York about local progress toward sustainability," she says. Her answer was the Green Apple map, a guide to the city's environmentally and culturally significant places. The Municipal Art Society supported the first print run of 10,000 copies. Since then, there have been four paper editions of the map and a web version.

"When people looked at the map," Brawer says, "they saw things about the city they had not seen before. I realized that it was a great tool kit for working on the environment. I also began to hear from people all over the world who wanted to create green maps of their own cities."

In 1995, at a U.N. summit in Copenhagen, Brawer met with other designers who were interested in sustainability and proposed a mapmaking collaborative. Soon after, she established the Green Map System, which registers mapmakers from around the world and promotes their projects and websites. Today, she has a small staff and an international board of advisers.

The 135 projects now complete or under way in 35 countries are a diverse lot, ranging from the Lower Manhattan Youth Green Map (LoMap) and a series of neighborhood maps in Chicago; to city maps (Malmo, Sweden, and Kyoto, Japan); to a map covering a nine-county region in western Pennsylvania and a statewide effort in Rhode Island.

Almost 60 maps have been produced to date. Some focus on landscapes or plants. Others are oriented to "green tourism" (as in Toronto), and others
are related to planning projects. In March, Thailand published a green map of the country's national parks. Buenos Aires's map looks to the future, predicting how sea level rise will affect the city in 2050. Holland released a green map for cyclists on the country's first national car-free day in 1999. "Through the maps, we want to help people see themselves as stewards of the environment," says Brawer, "and to see the results as part of the web of life."

In 1996, a group in Utrecht, Holland, produced the first online map. But access to the maps is not limited to computer users, Brawer points out. "A lot of projects are in places where they're using off-computer means to create maps."

Significant icons

One of the first steps in creating the green map says Brawer, was to come up with a set of symbols that would link all the sites and all the maps. The
Green Map System now includes 125 icons representing not only environmental features but also economic development activities, transportation lines, and culturally significant sites.

New icons are added to the roster as needed. For example, a lighthouse symbol created for a green map in Cape May, New Jersey, is now used internationally. So are icons devised by schoolchildren who mapped a former military base in Calgary, Alberta.

For California architect Isabelle Duvivier, the graphic symbols are especially important. "Some of our icons are really beautiful," says Duvivier, who is responsible for San Monica's first green map. She had to invent or rename symbols for some of the map locations, including waste and oil recycling centers, skateboard shops, and "opportunity sites" (places that may eventually become quality habitats).

Duvivier's small firm in nearby Venice seeks out environmental projects. "Whenever possible," she says, "we work with nontoxic materials, passive solar heating and cooling, and water recycling." To her dismay, she says, she realized that most Los Angeles-area residents have little knowledge of the ecology of their region. After coming across a magazine article about Wendy Brawer's green map system, she presented the idea to the Santa Monica Environmental Programs Division.

"The city agreed to sponsor the map, but it wanted to focus just on Santa Monica. I managed to convince them that bird migration routes don't stop at city borders. Neither does pollution. So we ended up doing a two-sided green map. On one side is the city. On the other is the Ballona Watershed, which just happens to be the watershed that Hollywood and Beverly Hills are in.

"Looking at the region as a watershed instead of just a collection of cities is a way to educate people, to get them to see that, if you throw a cigarette in the gutter, it's going to end up in the ocean via the storm drainage system." The map was released late last month at Santa Monica's Earth Day festival.

The Ballona map includes the watershed's exact boundaries, its existing and "ancient" creeks and wetlands, lakes and reservoirs, wildlife migration routes, storm water pollution sources, native plants, endangered species, public lands, current greening and habitat restoration projects, and "environmental schools" (which have agreed to depave their playgrounds).

The Santa Monica side of the map focuses on "green-minded" businesses, including farmers markets, vegetarian restaurants, alternative vehicle fuel stations, and winners of Santa Monica's Sustainable Quality Award (Duvivier Architects is one). It also includes school-sponsored "learning gardens," composting sites, solid waste transfer stations, water recycling systems, and some very California entries like Rollerblade routes.

Eventually, says Duvivier, she hopes to produce close-up maps of neighborhoods within the watershed. Her aim: "to transform L.A. County into a series of communities linked by green corridors."

Meanwhile, the city has plans to use the maps to stimulate public discussions on sustainability and to educate teachers about the interconnectedness of activities within the watershed.


Who pays?

While the city contributed a good chunk of the cost of Santa Monica's green map, mapmakers elsewhere have had to scramble for funds. Michael Gray, who supervised a green map in Calgary, notes that the total budget was kept under $5,000 because most of the labor was donated by young people.

In the case of the nation's first statewide green map, released in 1998 in Rhode Island, a combination of state and federal funding sources was tapped for the almost $25,000 budget. But that amount covered only fixed costs like printing and mailing, not the mapmaking itself. Adding that cost would have brought the total to $40,000 or $50,000, says George Johnson, assistant chief for strategic planning with the Rhode Island Statewide Planning Program, who oversaw production of the map.

As part of a statewide green-ways project, the map shows 500 miles of existing and proposed greenways; 200 miles of bike paths (35 miles have been built so far); 75 miles of trails; eco-tourism activities; wildlife reserves; and watershed boundaries.

The first $10,000 in funding came from a legislative appropriation in 1997, three years after Johnson's agency completed the state's greenways plan. The rest, about $15,000, was put together from federal transportation planning funds funneled through Johnson's agency, which is also the state's metropolitan planning organization.

The greenways plan recommended that a coordinating council be appointed to
oversee the production of a greenways map.

The Rhode Island Greenways Council includes representatives of the state's transportation and environmental agencies and of the economic development agency, which is reponsible for promoting tourism, an important impetus for this green map.

While the funding was being put in place, the members of the council-along with other groups like the state Audubon Society-helped to supply the mapmakers with data. Production of the map took about three months, with two private firms hired for GIS work and graphics. A total of 100,000 copies were printed. Regional tourism councils helped with distribution, Johnson says.

In the process of creating the map, Johnson discovered Wendy Brawer's green map group. "We adopted 30 to 40 percent of their icons," he says, "including those for park systems, natural features, and intermodal transportation." The map highlights such features as the East Coast Greenway (Rhode Island will be part of it); the South County bike path, which leads to the Atlantic Ocean; Kingston's historic Amtrak station; the Block Island ferry connection, and even marine pump-out facilities ("probably an icon no other state has").

The green map became part of a broader effort to market the state, Johnson says. "We wanted to promote public appreciation of greenways, but we also wanted to promote tourism and support the revitalization of our cities. So our focus may be somewhat narrower than that of other green maps."

The next step is to update the map. Johnson has already identified a potential funding source in the federal TEA-21 transportation act. He says he would like to improve the online version by making it interactive.


In the schools

Involving young people has been a goal of the green map movement since the beginning, says Wendy Brawer. New York children have mapped their neighborhoods and traced the solid waste stream.

In Canada, Michael Gray, a planner in Calgary, helped a group of children produce a green map of a former army base. In the process, the group developed new icons that are now being used around the world. "The kids noticed right away that most of map icons are adultcentric. So they came up with their own," Gray says. Among those new icons are symbols for "great places to watch clouds" and for trees that would make "cool tree forts."

The first version was low-tech. The maps were traced on mylar and descriptions were written out by hand. A simple map is fine, says Gray. Many places see a printed map as their first step, adds Wendy Brawer. Support for an online version can come later.

In Santa Monica, city officials stipulated that Isabelle Duvivier work with high schools and local colleges. "We worked with the Santa Monica High School Wildlife Club and the Santa Monica College Geoclub," she recalls. "The high school students used aerial photos to locate a corridor connecting three big chunks of open space. That went on the map. The students also interviewed people who ran green businesses and made a video.

"We did fun things like going out in a sea kayak for bird watching, and gathering wild edible plants. It was a way to bring together groups that would not ordinarily meet-students and business leaders, for instance-to talk about green business."

Education is also the clear mission of the Community Mapping Program initiated two years ago by the newly created Orton Institute of Rutland, Vermont, and Steamboat Springs, Colorado. "We're trying to get information out to teachers about the importance of place-based education," says executive director William Roper.

In both states, 10th and 11th graders are using GIS mapping programs, supplied by Orton, to study significant resources, Roper says. In Steamboat Springs, a class produced a plan for a 200-acre site on the edge of town that had recently been bought by the state Fish and Wildlife Department. In Woodstock, Vermont, two classes looked at cemeteries in an effort to relate
names on headstones to local businesses.

The institute is part of the Orton Family Foundation, which was established by the owners of the Vermont Country Store, a catalog business. "Our goal is to help communities shape future growth patterns," says Roper, an environmental lawyer who says he was eager for a more hands-on approach.


Decisions

Not every decision about the green maps is clear-cut. One area of controversy is whether to include the negatives, like brownfield sites. In New York, says Wendy Brawer, "toxic hot spots" have been added to the maps. "But not every mapmaker needs to do that," she says. "It's a local
decision."

In Rhode Island, where the green map emphasized tourism, state officials decided to leave out the negative, says George Johnson.

The same is true in Santa Monica, according to Isabelle Duvivier. "We didn't include brownfields because the city didn't want us to," she says.

Other places have other decisions to make. Should the map locate the nesting grounds of an endangered bird species or the site of a sacred burial ground? Duvivier notes that the Santa Monica map is vague about the location of Native American sites. As always, making maps means making choices.

Ruth Knack is the executive editor of Planning.