Hurry, Grey to Green Conference Registration Closes Soon, this Sunday May 29!

Online registration closes this Sunday, May 29th for the 4th Annual Grey to Green Conference on Green Infrastructure and Climate Change, presented by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. Don’t miss this opportunity to come to a great city, hear from some awesome presenters, and visit some wonderful sustainable design projects during Grey to Green 2016!

Held in Toronto on June 1 through June 4, 2016, the 4th Annual Grey to Green Conference is about living green infrastructure and its ability to provide tangible, scientifically proven solutions to the challenges of climate change, particularly in cities. We are in the solutions business! Green roofs, green walls, bioswales, and urban forests can help us mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by reducing energy consumption directly in buildings and indirectly by reducing the urban heat island effect. We can also use plants to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, locking them in the soil and tissue of plants. Green infrastructure can also be designed to capture and retain huge volumes of stormwater in a ‘treatment train’ from the roofs, to the walls, to the streets, and so on. This helps us reduce the risk of flooding, which is costing billions in insurance claims. Green infrastructure also provides new opportunities for us to produce food, in and around buildings.

At Grey to Green will explore the wide breadth of these, and even more opportunities that living technologies provide to allow us to prepare for climate change and make our cities more livable. ~ Read more at Living Green Infrastructure is at the Heart of Grey to Green 2016 by Steven Peck, Founder and President, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities

Held once again at Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science, I’m really excited to be returning to Toronto – the last time Aramis and I visited was in October, 2009 when Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, as members of the then WGRIN (now WGIN) held its first conference named “CitiesAlive! World Green Roof Infrastructure Congress.” This was, of course, before they renamed the original Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities to the current CitiesAlive. You can see lots of photos at my The Inaugural CitiesAlive! – Seeds of Success and CitiesAlive! ’09 Day Tour & Evening Fiesta.

Toronto City Hall

This was our view, above, from our hotel window in late October, 2009 – the new (still being installed, actually) Nathan Phillips Square Toronto City Hall Podium Green Roof, a LiveRoof modular system. Here’s what it looked like in July 2010:

By User:GreenRoofGardener – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, on Wikimedia Commons.

I think I’m most looking forward to meeting and networking with all of the new colleagues we’ll meet at Grey to Green 2016 next week, although I’m pretty excited to be touring the Ryerson Urban Farm (formerly Rye’s Homegrown), below, too:

Grey to Green Conference Registration Closes Sunday May 29

If you go, don’t miss my presentation on Friday, June in the “Session 12: Impacts of Green Infrastructure Design: Living Architecture Wonders, Technical Issues and Life-Cycle Costing.” It’s a new topic for me: “Top 10 Green Infrastructure Eco-Agents in a Climate-Changing World.” Eco-Agents? You know, like secret agents – just fighting for the good of our climate-changing world in broad daylight! Here’s my description:

How does the design world combat climate change, deteriorating landscapes, and our ever-growing population? Green infrastructure can be both low and high-tech, and when combined with emerging technologies, this double punch of environmental design propels change and provides inspiration for the rest of us.

Designing with living architecture in our built and natural environments continues to ameliorate and connect our flora, fauna, and human ecosystems. Progressive governments as well as avant-garde architects and designers have captured the essence of living with nature and these timely, important, and spectacular projects will be highlighted from across the globe as eco-agents offering positive effects on a meso-scale. ~ Linda S. Velazquez, Grey to Green Abstract

I’ll also be moderating a session, and attending the fun Networking on the Lake at the Amsterdam Brewery on the Toronto harbor on Thursday, June 2nd.