Green Planning is a comprehensive, legally mandated program
of environmental protection and restoration. The Netherlands',
National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP) is considered "the
world's most advanced national program for creating an economy
that doesn't destroy the environment." (The Netherlands'
Radical, Practical Green Plan, Alex Stephan and Alan Atkisson,
in Whole Earth Review, Fall 1995, pg. 94)
The Netherlands, with its small land area and increasing population,
may be the earliest model of the future scenario facing major
industrialized countries and their urban areas. "Holland
is one of the world's most crowded nations, with about 1, 145
people per square mile (compared to the U.S. figure of 70). By
2010, they will be sharing their small country with seven million
cars, fifteen million cows and 450 million chickens. Their "environmental
space" --a measure of the land's capability to sustain a
given population -- is tiny, and well past full."
The Netherlands' plan uses integrated lifecycle management,
energy conservation, sustainable technologies, and improved public
awareness as the cornerstones for making sustainability achievable.
Integrated lifecycle management closes resource loops by making
producers responsible for whatever remains of their product after
the user is through with them. Energy conservation makes industries
competitive and lowers environmental production costs. A crash
program has been instituted to develop sustainable technologies
and products, redesigning many elements from the ground up. The
government is involved in massive public education programs involving
schools, ecology centers, environmental groups and the media.
In the United States some green planning is taking place. Chattanooga,
Tennessee, a worn industrial town, is in the process of transformation.
They used an innovative 'visioning' process to allow residents,
business leaders and local officials to create a public consensus
about the city's future. All agreed it should be cleaner, greener
and safer with rehabilitated housing and nonpolluting jobs. Direct
action has included installation of oil skimming devices on parking
lots and commercial properties to protect waterways, use of electric
buses, and revitalization of the riverfront and downtown through
recycling of old housing and factories. In other places, Sustainable
Seattle tracks indicators of environmental and economic health.
Connecticut cities are working to rehabilitate abandoned trolley
and rail lines. These cities are looking for a way to take a combined
approach to solving environmental, economic and social problems.
(Steve Learner, Chattanooga Green Revival, in New Age Journal,
September/October 1995)