Architecture & Urban Planning

For millennia, Colorado's Yampa River Valley has followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change didn't occur until the last half of the 20th century. That's when the big ranches began to be broken up into small ranchettes and vacation-home lots, the kind of low-density exurban sprawl responsible for habitat fragmentation across the West.

On the surface, it would seem that keeping built healthcare facilities as environmentally friendly and healthy as possible would be a no-brainer; after all, if the first rule of medicine is to first, do no harm, the building itself should be free from harmful materials, and as “green” and sustainable as possible. Doesn’t it make sense that a building you visit to get healthy would itself be healthy?

Not long ago, a visitor came from Israel to Milwaukee to share his perspective on that country’s environmental movement. Daniel Orenstein is a Senior lecturer, in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Orenstein met WUWM Environmental reporter Susan Bence next to one of Milwaukee’s “greening spaces” – the Milwaukee River, and explained his philosophy. He believes environmental solutions can be attained by understanding that human social systems are linked to ecological systems.