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Community Corner

Greenbelt's 75th Anniversary Symposium

A Look at Greenbelt's past, present, and future

 

To celebrate 75 years of Greenbelt’s civic life, Isabelle Gournay, organizer of Greenbelt’s 75th Anniversary Symposium, envisioned a spirited dialogue about Greenbelt’s multi-faceted legacies.

Gournay said Monday she hopes that “the conversation between these fantastic speakers and an audience of both insiders and outsiders will be pursued."

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More than 175 people registered for a day and a half of presentations and Mervyn Miller's keynote address on the British Garden City movement and Greenbelt. The voices of academics, city staff, and Greenbelt residents generated wide interest. Nearly half of the first day’s attendees identified themselves as Greenbelt outsiders.

Megan Searing Young, director of the Greenbelt Museum, agreed that the symposium brought out important burgeoning dialogues about historic preservation, sustainability, race, age, and sexual orientation.

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Citizen engagement was a major theme. Present-day Greenbelters discussed recent efforts of citizens organizing to meet needs. Barbara Havekost spoke about the citizen-led initiative to establish the Greenbelt Museum. Kim Rush Lynch and Joe Gareri highlighted the vision and planning behind the producers-only Greenbelt Farmers’ Market, now 5 years old.

The Rev. Daniel Hamlin, pastor of the , discussed race and religion and described how religious leaders and community members organized to challenge KKK activity in 1997. Others feel that although progress has been made on racial inclusivity, more work remains to be done.

Resident Lois Rosado, a member of the 75th Anniversary Committee, pointed out that residents outside of Old Greenbelt can feel disconnected. She challenged the city and the audience to look at the recent surveys of voters and citizens and find more ways of engaging all Greenbelt citizens in the life of the city.

While the city was originally planned to be walkable, the auto-oriented suburban sprawl of the intervening decades has created sustainability challenges. Mark Noll, a student in UMD’s Urban Studies & Planning program, and recent UMd. graduate Deborah Sward presented walkability studies in Greenbelt East and Matt Johnson discussed Metro connectivity.

Carl Elefante, a sustainability and design expert at Quinn Evans Architects, recapped the 2007 Greener Greenbelt Initiative, an innovative visioning process that involved the community—and an example of the type of dialogue that Gournay hopes will continue.

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