Milwaukee’s Visionaries Face Skeptics in the News
April 30, 2012 § 4 Comments
Last year, we introduced you to Sweet Water Organics, a hybrid company (read: for-profit and non-profit) that is trying to develop a viable urban farm using aquaponics. They’re one of the first aquaponic farms in the country, drawing inspiration from operations like Growing Power. Recently, Tom Daykin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran an article about Sweet Water that reads like a bullet-point list of charges against the company.
When Riverwest Wins the Nobel Prize: James Godsil’s Vision of Milwaukee
April 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In one of our first guest writer features, we bring you James Godsil, the co-founder of Sweet Water Organics, on how Milwaukee became an incubator for the nearing sustainable cities revolution.
Revisiting the Riverwest Public House
April 2, 2012 § 1 Comment
Last year, we introduced you to the Riverwest Public House Cooperative, the nation’s second-ever cooperative bar (the first is a brewpub called Black Star in Austin, TX). The Public House is a little bar with a big idea: to use the excess revenue (read: profit) from the bar as an economic engine to start more co-ops in the Riverwest neighborhood.
On St. Patrick’s Day, the Public House turned 1 year old. At the commencement of an enormous party to celebrate, founder Gibson Caldwell announced that a group comprised of Public House founders and other cooperators in the neighborhood (Riverwest Investment Co-op, Riverwest Co-op & Cafe) had recently sent in their articles of incorporation for the Riverwest Cooperative Alliance (RCA). This, he said, was a huge step forward and after only a year in business as the Public House, the initial idea was picking up steam.
The Other Bracketology: the Race for #SoMeT12
March 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment
As I write this, Cleveland is less than an hour away from pulling off a comeback win against Kansas City in the first round of the Social Media Tourism Symposium’s (SoMeT12) “March Madness”-style bracket. Being a Clevelander, I am, of course, blindly promoting the city as the venue for this year’s symposium—hence the jabs at those Kansas Citians (yes, that is the correct demonym) on the other side of the Internet. Sorry guys, tough loss.
But Cleveland is not the only Rustbelt city involved in this tournament: Buffalo and St. Louis have already moved on to the second round, while Milwaukee will be taking on Lehigh Valley, PA tomorrow. What does it mean that out of a field of 16 competitors, four of them are Rustbelt cities that will be featured in our second Midwest Sustainable Cities Symposium this September?
Top Climate-Resilient Cities
June 27, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The environmental blog Grist recently posted a listing of the best/worst suited US cities for climate change. We were entirely unsurprised to hear that the very best-suited cities are the very same cities prominently featured on this humble blog: Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Chicago. Why? Says Grist, “Because they have a sustainable water supply (in four of the cities, the Great Lakes); their heat stress rankings are relatively low; and they are less vulnerable to natural disasters that will be exacerbated by climate change, such as floods, landslides, and wildfires.”
Victory Garden Initiative
April 18, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Victory Garden Initiative, a group in Milwaukee that’s basically crowd-sourcing the urban agriculture movement, is holding their third annual Blitz on May 28 (which coincidentally is the day of the Symposium in Chicago). They’ve got a great thing going, in spite of political obstacles last year in the form of restricted access to city water.
From their Facebook event:
The Blitz is a one day event aimed at installing as many new food-producing gardens as possible throughout the Milwaukee area. Help us as we install as many gardens as we can throughout the Milwaukee area on Blitz Day! We need your enthusiasm, your shovels, and your vision for a nutritious, sustainable food system. Real change, one garden at a time. We install garden beds throughout the day, then close the event with a Potluck to celebrate.
More after the jump…
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Sweet Water Organics
April 13, 2011 § 1 Comment
James Godsil, Co-founder of Sweet Water on transformation in action…
