Terrace Town (Midwest)

I wanted to post about this last week, because it was such a positive experience for me. I'm finally getting around to it.

About a week and a half ago I chaperoned my third grader on a field trip to Terrace Town. Terrace Town is an exhibit hosted by Monona Terrace (Madison's Convention Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright). Several local elementary schools participate. A class of students work together to create their own box city. This year kids were challenged to design sustainable neighborhoods out of recycled materials. Hannah was lucky enough to be in one of the classes that participated. The city of Madison provided an Urban Planner who attended the classroom several times prior to start of the project. The class took a neighborhood walk to discuss architecture and community planning. Then they went about planning, designing and constructing their box city. The city was named "Blue River". It had commercial, industrial, and residentual districts. They had green areas, and a bus system. The hospital had solar panels. There were turbines to generate electricity, a couple museums, a natural foods store and many rooftop gardens. It was all to scale (1/8 inch = 1 foot) and quite amazing. I know it's so cliche, but I really felt the children are our future. I was so grateful to them for learning what they were learning. It was such a great day.





Well, I have a busy week already in progress. I'm working on a large project for The Madison Trust for Historic Preservation and finishing several small projects. I'm also figuring out how to do the card giveaway that I eluded to in a previous post. More on that soon.