The emerging green economy can create wider opportunities for low-income people and long neglected neighborhoods through lower energy and transportation costs, and access to jobs with meaningful career ladders. However, in order for these changes to take place, we as a nation must intentionally build a “gateway to the green economy” at the advent of this economic paradigm. In March, Living Cities formed a 120-day working group to guide the organization’s White House activities, including conducting a training program for state and local leaders. The first installment of which is the “Green Stimulus Boot Camp: Recovery through Retrofitting” for state and local leaders.
This green working group is accelerating cross-member communication about current projects and initiatives, defining a specific agenda for Living Cities to implement and overseeing the implementation of that agenda. Currently, the working group is cementing plans for the Green Stimulus Boot Camp: Recovery through Retrofitting, an intensive training and peer-to-peer networking program for teams of city and state government officials. The camp will focus on creating enduring, local building of energy efficiency systems as a platform for green collar job creation for low-income people.
The purpose of the camp is to provide senior-level local and state agency staff with a deep immersion in state-of-the-field knowledge and emerging best practices in large-scale approaches to increasing energy efficiency and creating green collar jobs through building retrofits. Ultimately, Living Cities envisions a series of camps focused on the green economy—reaching at least 25 cities and states this year.
The Living Cities Green Stimulus Boot Camp: Recovery through Retrofitting will take place May 31 - June 2 at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at the nearby Charles Hotel in Cambridge. The camp is the next phase of the Project on Municipal Innovation between Living Cities and the Ash Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.