WIT AND HUMOR – A FUNNY SITE BY BOB WAYNE

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, a former city planner, spoke to city planners from across the United States this morning at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in Minneapolis.

This sparked a great deal of healthy debate this morning in the Bob Wayne household. Essentially because the Divas Drew’s brother-in-law is a city planner in San Diego and is in town for the convention. A lot of blah-blah and back and forth ensued and then suddenly, a bolt of lightening crashed into the table killing everyone in the room.

Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit of dramatization. No one was killed but I did have a great flash of an idea. One of our friends, Brenda Kayzar, is a professor of Urban Geography at the University of Minnesota. She is originally from the Chicago area. And what is Chicago doing? They have a “green roof” initiative in effect trying to make Chicago the greenest city in the United States.

While Minneapolis may not have the “creative politics” of Chicago, we do have a lot of creative people here. And I would love to see our Mayor R.T. Rybak “out green” Chicago by having our own “green” initiative.

And what should our green initiative be?

I watched an “Eco Tech” program on TV recently, about a company called Aerotecture International that has developed a wind turbine that can be used safely on any urban roof. And I love their paradigm:

• where wind farms are big, we are small
• where wind farms are rural, we are urban
• where wind farms avoid buildings, we attach to them
• where wind farms seek single monster units, we deploy many units
• where wind farms are hundreds of miles from their ‘users’, we are right there

So what would happen if the Mayor did the John F. Kennedy thing and announced that in ten years, he wants Minneapolis to be the number one urban wind energy producing city in the world? And get as many commercial building owners, developers, government buildings and corporate headquarters to commit to investing in safe, approved wind energy systems on their roofs?

They could offer tax breaks to every building that joins in, create a website to promote and honor every building that joins in, start a festival promoting alternative energy. Maybe we could offer tax incentives for urban wind energy companies to relocate here. The city could even have a Wind Energy Day with a parade, a big alternative energy show at the fairgrounds…I mean really make a big deal out of the Minneapolis Urban Wind Initiative.

But what do I know. I’m just a guy who hangs out with a stuffed pig…