Sustaining Sustainability: Interview with Katherine Gajewski, Director of Sustainability, City of Philadelphia

Authors

  • Martha Heuser
  • Erin Nowak
  • Tiffany Thurman

Abstract

Can you tell the readers about the Office of Sustainability and Greenworks Philadelphia? 

KG: This is a new field and a new component within government. This all came about from an advocacy effort in the mayor [Michael Nutter’s] race in 2007. One hundred thirty different nonprofits, community groups came together to form the Next Great City Coalition. Greenworks is a result of that. It’s starting to force government to think in a more integrated and systems-based way. There are not necessarily a lot of initiatives that set a vision for the city, specific metric-based goals and then map out a role that all the departments can play. [What’s unique about Philadelphia] is Greenworks has done that. 

There’s a piece of Greenworks that is starting to advance the conversation around questions of access and equity: How are we really thinking about neighborhoods and residents? Are they being well served or underserved to certain markets and to quality of life assets like: 

Tree coverage
Air quality 
Access to open space
Access to healthy and local foods?

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Published

2013-11-01

How to Cite

Heuser, M., Nowak, E., & Thurman, T. (2013). Sustaining Sustainability: Interview with Katherine Gajewski, Director of Sustainability, City of Philadelphia. Social Innovations Journal, (15). Retrieved from https://socialinnovationsjournal.com/index.php/sij/article/view/10620

Issue

No. 15 (2013): Issue 15 | Fall 2013

Section

Columns

License

Copyright (c) 2013 Martha Heuser, Erin Nowak, Tiffany Thurman (Author)

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