Sierra Club Miami Group encourages all sustainability-minded people to attend the upcoming Connected Communities Improvement Town Hall Meeting on February 15.
It offers an opportunity to add your ideas to the discussion and voice support for a range of sustainability proposals. Perhaps many readers are unfamiliar with Connected Communities, and why this meeting presents an important sustainability opportunity. Here’s some background:
Connected Communities, adopted by City Council in 2024, is a package of regulatory and zoning reforms designed to stimulate more housing construction and to focus that growth on neighborhood business districts and along transit corridors.
Connected Communities implements several recommendations of the Green Cincinnati Plan, which intends to make the city more walkable and transit friendly. This is generally consistent with smart growth principles. But all growth can bring unintended and possibly unwanted consequences, including increased burden on overloaded sewers, reduced tree canopy in urban heat islands, encroachment on steep slopes and floodplains, and other potential problems.
Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Kearney convened five task teams to develop recommendations for making Connected Communities better. The Environmental Task Team, co-chaired by Sierra Club Miami Group ExCom member Larry Falkin, has developed a package of recommendations addressing 11 issue areas to help Connected Communities embody sustainability principles.
You can view the Environmental Task Team’s draft report here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oQ8WDWdOfPtWm14VtDWlkK8UaLwZGlKW3K7veKySEac/edit?tab=t.0
Find a flyer for the Town Hall Meeting here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16_D-GHO_wz9k6DhwTOO35_tY2DRQ-cdS/view?usp=sharing
Please attend, and express your ideas and support for making Connected Communities more sustainable.
When: Saturday, February 15, 12 PM-3 PM
Where: Hamilton County Community Action Agency, 1740 Langdon Farm Road, Cincinnati, 45237