LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
While we often think of pristine wilderness when we imagine the nvironment, the truth is that the quality of life in urban centers and their outlying areas is what affects us most.
Imust confess. I’ve never been much of an environmental activist. Sure, I worry about climate change; I recycle; I am distressed over the despoiling of natural beauty. But really, the topic has never seized me intellectually or practically.
That changed in the course of planning and editing this issue of AQ on the environment. I wanted to
examine the topic from different angles and in ways
that are often overlooked in our everyday discussion. One way was to focus on cities. While we often
think of pristine wilderness or the inverse—
deforestation—when we imagine the environment, the
truth is that the quality of life in urban centers and
their outlying areas is what affects us most. We are
an overwhelmingly urban hemisphere. And our cities
affect our daily lives in multiple ways: our sense of
community, the bulk of our carbon output, our health,
and our access to good jobs. With that in mind, we
posed a question to three leading scholars and practitioners on urban planning and development: how
do you build a green city? I think you’ll be struck by
their passionate criticism of cities today, the diversity
of their ideas and some of the (often overlooked) successes in the Americas.
As always, AQ focuses on specific and unexpected
success stories. From advances in organic farming in
Cuba and the renewed U. S.-Canadian commitment to
—Christopher Sabatini, Editor-in-Chief
clean up the Great Lakes, to The Nature Conservancy’s
project to provide seed capital to green startup companies, we looked for examples of change that have
slipped below the radar screen. You may know about
others—and we welcome your letters and comments
telling us about them.
Our other departments continue to look at an array
of topics across the region. They include a timely dispatch from the field by reporter Dan Rosenheck, who
was in Honduras just after the June 28 coup, and an
article by Haitian-American journalist Garry Pierre-Pierre on former President Bill Clinton’s appointment
as UN Special Envoy to Haiti.
And speaking of Haiti, we were fortunate to score an
interview with musician Wyclef Jean about the work of
his foundation, Yéle Haiti, with disadvantaged Haitian
youth and on reforestation. The interview also serves
as good advance notice of our Winter 2009 issue on
youth and the new generation of the Americas.
In the end, I hope that even those readers who do not
join me in my belated conversion to environmentalism
will consider this issue a useful and multifaceted contribution to the debate. While editing, I discovered a
number of ideas, insights and topics that surprised me
and will now shape my views on the topic. And while
I’m not about to don a sea turtle costume and protest
the World Trade Organization, I am more likely now
to follow the news and remain engaged.
Stay up-to-date between issues. Visit www.AmericasQuarterly.org for news and analysis from bloggers around
the hemisphere and AQ Online’s web-exclusive authors as we cover the elections in Uruguay, Honduras, Bolivia, and Chile.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAFAEL FUCHS
FALL 2009 Americas Quarterly 3
