East Bay Green Corridor: Green for All?Zelda Bronsteinbyline‚ Jul. 07‚ 2009On June 26, the East Bay Green Corridor partnership held its second annual summit at the Oakland Museum. The partnership was founded in December 2007 by the mayors of Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, the chancellor of UC Berkeley and the then-director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Steven Chu, now Obama’s Secretary of Energy) on the premise that collaborating across city limits and institutional boundaries in the name of green economic development would bring the region lustre and lucre. “What we’re doing,” said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, the group’s chair and prime mover, “is putting down our cities’ chauvinism and saying, “Look, we’re all part of the area, and need to work together. We’re going to catch the green wave, and everyone’s going to be in the same boat.’” |