Intelligent Travel

Neighborhood Watch: Greensburg Rises from the Rubble

Once-backwater Greensburg, Kansas, is turning a brand-new, bright green leaf. With a population hovering around 1,500, the town has emerged over the past few months as one of the country’s most progressive, environmentally friendly cities.

Rising from the rubble left behind from last May’s devastating 1.7-mile-wide F5 tornado, Greensburg earlier this year became the first city in the United States to mandate that all city building projects be built to LEED platinum level standards. Just under a year after the rural area lost 11 residents and 95 percent of homes and businesses to the storm, new permits have been issued for 126 homes and 41 commercial buildings.

Locals have enthusiastically embraced their new tree-hugging image. “We are talking about a model green community for the world. And we want the world to visit. We could end up having ecotourism here,” Daniel Wallach, a local businessman who formed the Greensburg GreenTown organization to co-ordinate the effort, told the Guardian.

The town's previous claim to fame was an antiquated site called the Big Well—the largest hand-dug well in America—a stark difference from the cutting-edge developments of today. Set to debut in time for the tragedy's year anniversary on May 4th is the brand-new 5.4.7 Arts Center, a community gathering place and art museum-workshop designed by students from the University of Kansas's architecture school—built from a reclaimed munitions depot and complete with three wind turbines.

And already in the works are several innovative demonstration homes that will serve as eco-educational lodgings, where people can spend the night and see what it means to live in, say, a straw bale house. Plus, by September, a space where destroyed businesses can start up again under the same roof to share expenses—including ten retail shops—will open in the fancy new Business Incubator on Main Street.

"Greensburg is a work in progress," Greensburg GreenTown's Catherine Hart told IT. "There’s a lot happening. It’s really interesting because there’s still some debris and a lot of things that haven’t been rebuilt, but also some that has been, so the contrast between the two most find really interesting. The energy of being around rebuilding is really quite palpable."

It certainly doesn’t feel like Kansas. Where’s Toto when you need him?

Photo: New growth in Greensburg, by Stacy Barnes

Neighborhood Watch: Great Scot!

Speaking of healthy cities, a new rural community in Scotland is on track to be the world’s first “trim town.” Prince Charles himself is championing the deliberate city planning, which will plot the health of its future residents as priority No. 1. Scotland on Sunday has the scoop:

The Prince is concerned about the rising obesity epidemic in the UK, caused partially by poor diet and lack of exercise. But he also believes that where people live and the transport options available have a big influence on their health.

The new town, which may be called Knockroon after a nearby farm, will incorporate a range of features to discourage residents from using their cars, and lead them to adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Every home in Knockroon will be within five minutes' walk of shops, workplaces and other amenities. Streets will be designed to favour pedestrians over cars and be well lit at night to encourage walking.

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment—the organization charged with developing Knockroon—will be listening to locals’ input in order to create living, working neighborhoods that emphasize bicycling lanes and pedestrian walkways, all while taking maximum advantage of the idyllic surroundings. Even the housing, traditional Scottish tenements, will eschew elevators so their residents must huff it instead.

Here's hoping a new healthy trend takes shape!

Photo: Eden Photography

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Neighborhood Watch: Amsterdam's New Red Light District

Could Amsterdam be turning a new, prudish leaf? According to the New York Times, the Dutch capital is pitting plastic mannequins against flesh in the hopes of combating the district’s rising crime. 

The city council recently voted to clean up the notorious Red Light District, which, in the NYT's words, “has become bloated with expanding sleaze.” City elders say increasingly violent gangs, many of which are Russian and Eastern European, have infiltrated the historic district, especially amplified since prostitution was legalized in 2000. Earlier this year, a Dutch judge ordered the shutting down of one of Amsterdam’s top brothels, the Yab Yum Club. Plus, more than a hundred million euros have been promised to implement the transformation plan, which also includes cleaning up the area along the Damrak and Rokin main thoroughfares. 

The gentrification scheme has started with the city buying brothels, and so far, 18 street-side windows that formerly showcased scantily clad women now display the works of a few lucky young designers and photographers. Five former brothels on the square facing a 14th-century church—Amsterdam’s oldest church—have also been bought by the city. 

The Dutch capital elders are banking on the reduction of smut to bring art galleries, boutiques, fine-dining restaurants, and upscale hotels to the district, Amsterdam’s oldest quarter and site of seven medieval churches. But many locals argue that such changes would ruin the neighborhood’s soul. According to the Times, angry residents and landlords have enlisted lawyers and formed action groups to defend the Red Light District. Posters reading “Hands Off” have been plastered to area café and shop windows.

What do you think of the city council’s actions? Is it high time for a more family-friendly Amsterdam, or will gentrification spoil the city’s culture?

Photo: Trey Ratcliff

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Neighborhood Watch: A Sign of Change in Hollywood?

One of Hollywood’s most photographed stars could be on its way to becoming just another real estate selling point if a Chicago-based investment firm has its way.

Cahuenga Peak’s 138 acres of unspoiled mountains, which stretch behind the postcard-ready Hollywood sign, hit the real estate market earlier this month for a cool $22 million—much to the chagrin of Los Angeles city officials, who reportedly have been trying to raise funds over the past several years to purchase the property. The city hoped to preserve the mountaintop and join it with Griffith Park, where the sign sits.

According to the L.A. Times, city leaders have so far accumulated about $5 million and had intended to ask the nonprofit Trust for Public Land to help negotiate a selling price with Fox River Financial Resources. A recent appraisal estimated the ridge was worth about $6 million, resulting in all-out sticker shock from Fox River’s lofty asking price.

Ironically, the glitzy relic-turned-Kodak-moment dates back to 1923, when the Hollywoodland Real Estate Group spent $21,000 on the sign as an advertisement to promote a new residential subdivision. The sign’s 13 letters (it read “Hollywoodland” until 1949) each measured 30 feet wide by 50 feet tall and were only intended to be a temporary addition to the landscape. Four thousand 20-watt bulbs glittered through the Hollywood night, visible from 25 miles away, and soon the sign became a symbol of the city's glamour. But after several years the icon fell into disrepair and was replaced with the debut of a new 45-foot-tall sign in 1978.

Neighborhood Watch: Dots in Detroit

Welcome to Intelligent Travel's newest column: Neighborhood Watch, in which we highlight what's happening in urban enclaves.

Despite Detroit’s well-publicized urban blight, Heidelberg Street has maintained its place as a bright spot in an otherwise concrete wasteland for the past 22 years. The street's abandoned homes have been cheerfully re-imagined  with thousands of splattered polka dots and vacant lots are plastered with spray-painted doll heads, stuffed animals, and rusty bicycles. 

Once host to more than 300 African-American-owned businesses, the inner-city east side neighborhood was destroyed by the 1967 Detroit race riots. In 1986, local artist Tyree Guyton and his grandfather and wife took paintbrush and broom to the neighborhood, now known as the Heidelberg Project, in the hopes of transforming the urban decay into a public art environment. Cleaning up vacant lots, they collected junk and trash and repurposed it as art to link the concepts of discarded objects and discarded communities and people.

Though the site has drawn myriad supporters and inspired similar art projects, the city council hasn't always been a fan. The square block of street art has twice weathered city demolition (in 1991 and 1999), managing to not only survive but evolve into one of the top tourist attractions of Detroit today.

“The greatest asset in Detroit is the people—they have remarkable survival skills,” says Jenenne Whitfield, executive director of the Heidelberg Project. “Tyree felt his work was so important that some bulldozers could not keep him down. And each time he rebuilt, the project came back stronger.”