Jun 06 2009
Walk Through America’s Greenest Towns
On June 8, Greensburg, Kansas—working to become the greenest town in America, inaugurates its first guided Green Tour in response to admirers as varied as Leonardo DiCaprio and a town in China that Greensburg is partnering with.
Click here for a PDF with the itinerary and a description of each project. 
An EF-5 tornado in 2007 flattened 95 percent of Greensburg (right), a farming town close to the geographic center of the contiguous United States. But the 1,500 residents of this all-American community who had built their lives around this place decided to bring it back—as a national model of eco-friendly building practices and green living.
Follow the story of Greensburg’s reconstruction on Discovery Networks’ Planet Green. DiCaprio is the series’ executive producer.
The resuscitation of a prairie town as a down-to-earth demonstration of green building—from all-LED street lighting to cellulose insulation and composting toilets—and alternative energy sources—from solar to wind power—has captured imaginations.
The new guided tour responds to a demand for more information. At $5 an hour per person for groups of two to 20 (or more), visitors will walk or drive to the Silo Eco-Home (modeled after the town’s sturdy silo, which withstood the tornado), Sun Chips Business Incubator, Greensburg Cubed Project, affordable townhomes (House X shown above), 5.4.7 Arts Center (below) clad in gorgeous recycled glass, and other practical applications of green technologies. GreenTown, a local nonprofit that’s provided many of the ideas for rebuilding, is running the daily tours.
You’ll also see Dwayne Shank Motors, a car dealership that the tornado leveled. The Shanks decided to rebuild in an environmentally friendly way, becoming, GreenTown says, “a model for affordable sustainable development, paving the way for other local businesses to rebuild.” The south-facing facility, among other features, is completely powered by two wind turbines and was built to be LEED-certified equivalent.
If you feel like driving about 350 miles northeast to Rock Port, Missouri, you’ll also witness the first U.S. town to derive all its energy from wind power, making it possibly the first energy-independent town in America. The $90-million Loess Hills Wind Farm on bluffs west of town began generating five megawatts a day in April 2008. The growing farm may eventually produce up to 16 megawatts a day.
Energy-independent towns are wonderful . . . and not new. Farsighted architects around the world, such 
as Alexandros Tombazis in Greece, have been planning alternative-energy demonstration villages for decades. Many take their cues from ancient builders, who knew a thing or two about passive solar structures, geothermal energy and other simple, effective solutions.
Some, like Tombazis, have actually seen their projects built, unusual in a modern world where cities’ and developers’ budgets very often trump thoughtful innovation.
Greensburg has thrown many of the old hesitations to the wind. But it is a small place, where, like the less populous ancient world, community decision-making is feasible. It takes hard work for larger towns and cities to do the same.
