Cora White, Neighborhood Advocate
The Center for Resilient Cities, a Madison and Milwaukee-based nonprofit whose mission is to help urban citizens and governments create healthy, economically attractive, sustainable environments, just broke ground on one of their largest projects. The Resilience Research Center will turn a four-acre site on Madison's South Side just off the Beltline at Badger and Rimrock Roads into an innovative and vibrant hub where multi-generations will learn and thrive. The first phase, planned to open in the fall of 2011, will house a project-based charter school (Badger Rock Middle School), a neighborhood center and commercial kitchen. The Center will also house neighborhood-focused businesses, an MG&E Energy Services Center and several acres of hear-round urban agriculture.
This visionary concept in building sustainable communities will offer hands-on learning centered around food production, healthy eating and living, energy and water use, and breathing new life into distressed neighborhoods. Researchers from UW-Madison and Milwaukee and Edgewood College have signed on to study the Center's innovative programming and its impact on this multicultural, multi-generational neighborhood. Kate Stalker and Cora White describe how this Center of Tomorrow has become a reality today.
