ABSTRACT
To Peter Berg, who originated the term, “green city” is an adjective, a verb, and a concept. People who live in cities, towns, and suburban areas, where the overwhelming majority of the population lives, have a more difficult time understanding the bioregional idea than do rural people, and even when urban dwellers begin to intellectually comprehend “living-in-place,” they find putting the concepts into practice problematic. In this witty talk, originally presented to the Urban Panel of the North American Bioregional Congress (NABC) in 1986, Berg tells the story of establishing the Green City program in the San Francisco Bay Area—“You’ll see how successful being naive can be.” (Thanks to Peter Berg, San Francisco is now a leading green city in the United States.) Besides being an entertaining historical account, this piece offers savvy advice to others for starting Green City programs in their own areas.
