From Green Right Now Reports

Columbus, Ohio, is celebrating the opening of the Grange Insurance Audubon Center at Scioto Audubon Metro Park, a brownfield redevelopment site that is a major bird migration stopover point. The $14.5 million center is the first of its kind to be built so close to surrounding urban spaces, according to Ohio officials.

“This new park and nature center are a treasure for our community and are a vital component in making Columbus’ urban spaces a great place to live, work or visit,” John O’Meara, executive director of Metro Parks, said in a statement.

The 18,000-square-foot Grange Insurance Audubon Center is the culmination of efforts by the city of Columbus, Metro Parks and Audubon Ohio to redevelop the brownfield area on the Whittier Peninsula, a former industrial dumping ground. The site is now home to a 72-acre park on Columbus’ Scioto River.

The new Audubon Center was funded by a public-private partnership that included a $4 million lead gift from Grange Insurance. The center, which will be LEED certified, will host year-round environmental education programs and will include a Metro Park boat dock and climbing wall.

Paul Dorn knows that getting Americans to ride a bike to work instead of driving a car is quite the uphill battle. Even on a good day, he says, only a tiny percentage of the nation’s commuters use pedal power to get to their jobs.

He remains undeterred.

Given that this is national Bike to Work Week, it’s an apt time to pick Dorn’s brain on the subject. Between co-authoring a book (The Bike to Work Guide: What You Need to Know to Save Gas, Go Green, Get Fit) his bike commuting advice Web site and his commuting tips blog, he is well-versed in the subject.

“I’m fairly typical of most Americans in the sense that the day I got my driver’s license, the bike went into the garage. I didn’t really touch it again until my mid-30s, when I was living in San Francisco, and didn’t have a car,” he said. His frustrating mass transit commute took 90 minutes. So he hopped on a bike, cut the commuting time in half, felt healthier, stopped paying bus fare and just generally started having more fun.

He’s still doing it at age 48, (now living in Sacramento and working at The University of California at Davis) and hasn’t owned a car since 1992.

Of course, starting out in San Francisco helped. It’s a generally bike-friendly city, and Dorn (pictured at left) found  a supportive cycling community to tell him about equipment, routes to avoid traffic and other advice. He started the website in 1997 as a class exercise. “People started finding it and at the time there weren’t a lot of online resources on the subject,” he said. So he offered guidance in bikes and equipment, dealing with bad weather and traffic and now has a loyal following.

“I’m just trying to provide inspiration and information for people who might be traveling by bike.”

Bike to Work Week is the brainchild of the League of American Bicyclists (which traces its roots to 1880). The organization offers support, advocacy, resources, education and information to their 300,000 affiliated cyclists. It’s all about creating a more bicycle-friendly America.

To that end, they have a project guide for cyclists interested in organizing events and support for Bike to Work Week as well as Bike Month (which is now). Part of the guide includes suggestions for overcoming excuses not to ride your bike to work (if you say you’re too out of shape, they say ride at an easy pace, and try it on a weekend; if you say it will take too long, they respond that car commuters travel an average 10 mph, and you’ll eventually go faster on the bike; it’s too far, you say – then combine riding and mass transit to shorten your commute).

Move over Seattle, Portland, and Austin and other green heavyweights — make room for some like-minded  newcomers.

Columbus, Ohio; New Orleans, La., Syracuse, N.Y., and Louisville, Ky., residents might not be wearing Birkenstocks and basking under solar tubes. But they are living in some of the growing number of mid-sized American cities that are making impressive green strides, changing their attitudes and getting smarter about eco-choices.

Syracuse, led by Mayor Matthew Driscoll,  is becoming a greener “Emerald City” of New York with its sustainability website, partnerships with area universities and an impressive number 17 placement for 2008 on Popular Science’s list of the 50 Greenest Cities in the U.S..

“Going green makes sense — we’re the third largest collegiate community in America — we have major research institutes all right here. We’re a plethora of green activity, making green-collar jobs available,” Driscoll said. “Just ten years ago, I was talking about going green and people didn’t really get it. Now, with people paying four bucks a gallon in gas at times, people are listening. They’re very much in tune with conservation and transitioning into a green city.”

Also looking at a greener horizon, Mayor Michael B. Coleman is easing Columbus toward the earth-friendly forefront. “There are many, many green initiatives going on right now. We have an award-winning green fleet program, and we are making our city buildings green. We have a new “Green Spot” program with over 650 businesses and community groups signing up so far to make sure our city is making greener choices,” he says.

“I was an early supporter of going green in Columbus. I believe we must tackle our environmental issues head on, and I’ve created “The Green Memo”, which lays out a plan for making our air and water cleaner, and for attracting new, green jobs in our city,” he said.

With conservation becoming a must, and urban areas trying to find ways to save money like never before, going green is presenting simple and attractive solutions. Here are the most buzzed-about green happenings for these four locations, some of which are garnering national attention:

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus didn’t make the Popular Science list, but it’s got its own ambitious list of green initiatives and could develop into an unlikely green champion of the Rust Belt.