Out here in the hinterlands, things are getting empty. Less and less people are living here all the time as more and more choose city life, and it's the same all over the globe -- in 2008, for the first time in human history, demographers say more than half the world's population was living in urban areas. Here in the U.S., over 80% of us reside in metropolitan areas, and that number is growing. Cities are the future. If that future is going to be sustainable, our cities will have to be, too. That makes greening our urban landscapes an urgent task and organizations like ioby something to seek and support.
ioby, which stands for "in our backyards," is a reaction to the unfortunate NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) trend that has forced so much environmental destruction and other unfortunate things on low-income communities that haven't the resources to defend themselves. This New York City nonprofit microphilanthropy organization connects New Yorkers and others who care about the city to neighborhood environmental stewardship and reclamation projects in need of help. It's a simple idea: you browse ioby's web site, find a grassroots project that strikes a personal chord, and click to donate money and/or time. It could be repairing a beehive or building a turtle sanctuary. It could be a community garden or composting project. It could be a green space restoration or an alternative transportation program. No matter what you pick, you're making the city more sustainable. And it doesn't take a lot to make a real difference.
ioby notes a third of all the city's eco-projects are volunteer efforts with annual budgets of less than $1,000. These projects and the people who make them happen are the vanguard of a greener urban future and thus a better tomorrow for us all. No matter where we live, we all have a stake in what happens in our cities, and ioby makes it easy to get involved in the urban sustainability movement.
Groups like ioby working to support that movement are popping up in cities all over the country these days. Not all of them work the same way, but they're all addressing the same fundamental need to create more environmentally livable metropolises, and together they're changing the way we see and inhabit our cities. ioby shows us that the sustainable city is not an oxymoron. And that's worth a moment or two of our time as often as we can spare it.
