Alabama native Ed McMahon, the Senior Fellow for Sustainable Development at the Urban Land Institute (ULI) inWashington, D.C., will deliver two free lectures at local universities this week.
A nationally known authority on smart growth, land conservation and historic preservation, McMahon will speak on “The Dollars and Sense of Sustainability,” according to event organizer Pat Byington.
McMahon will speak at Comer Auditorium at the University of Montevallo, Thursday, September 20, at 1:30 p.m.
He’ll appear at Alumni Auditorium in the Hill University Center at UAB, September 20 at 7 p.m.
Author of 15 books and over 100 articles, McMahon directs the ULI’s worldwide efforts to use research and education to encourage development that is both economically and environmentally sound.
According to bhamwiki.com, This heavy-hitter in the green world attended John Carroll High School, Spring Hill College in Mobile, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he earned his M.A. in Urban Studies.
In the presentation, McMahon “will be presenting tangible and useful examples locally and nationally of why sustainability works and can enhance a community, not only environmentally but also economically,” Byington told Weld Local in an email.
Byington is the editor of The Green Register, a national website sponsored by The Institute of Sustainability (TIOS), a Birmingham-based green certification firm.
McMahon “is a true Alabama environmental hero on a national scale,” Byington said, noting that McMahon was the founder of Scenic America and director of the American Greenway Program. “He started working on sustainability programs and policies literally decades before the movement ‘took off,’” Byington said.
Perhaps McMahon will mention the controversial proposed Northern Beltline freeway in Birmingham. In December 2009, he told Thomas Spencer of the Birmingham News, “Building beltways as an economic development tool is last-century thinking.”
At a land-planning conference in Norfolk,Va., in May, McMahon again expressed skepticism about big road projects, according to dailypress.com. “If you think widening roads will help ease congestion, that’s kind of like letting your belt out to fight obesity,” he said.
Hey, he’s not Carson’s sidekick, but this McMahon is still a jokester.
Although his lectures are free, pre-registration is recommended.
Call (205) 983-8028 or go to http://thegreenregister.com.
