Appalachia Scheme Wins Buckminster Fuller Contest

From the Architectural Record:

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a new annual design competition created to honor the late architect-inventor-ecologist who would have celebrated his 113th birthday this Saturday, has a winner.

John Todd, a Cape Cod-based scientist and environmental planner, has taken home the blue ribbon for his “Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia,” an economic plan that calls for cleaning up and replanting 1.5 million acres of land from Ohio to Alabama that coal producers have strip-mined.

To insure jobs won’t be lost as mines close, Todd details how to transition the region’s fossil-fuel-based economy to one that relies on the sale of wind power and wood. He also explains how not-for-profits could tap federal mine-remediation funds to buy land from private companies.