98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

FT 14

Greening in Downtown Minneapolis: A Walking Tour of the Loring Greenway and Loring Park

The Loring Park Neighborhood just west of the convention center is a high-density urban area with 6,000+ residents, museums, office buildings and cathedrals surrounding the centerpiece of the neighborhood: Loring Park, and the greenway that connects it to the downtown business district. Two neighborhood-based non-profit organizations, The Loring Greenway Association (http://loringgreenway.org/)and Friends of Loring Park (http://www.friendsofloringpark.org/), cooperate with government agencies that own the land to supplement governmental efforts with volunteer labor and knowledge of local needs and uses. We will see examples of their work along the greenway and in the park. We will discuss issues of urban ecology, maintaining greens space and urban forests, working with volunteers, and how non-profit organizations interact with government.