Making Connections News

Could Whitesburg, long an east Kentucky coal town, become a "Green Healthy Town?" Five University of Virginia students in the Master’s of Urban and Environmental Planning Program presented their assessment of existing conditions within a roughly one-mile corridor of downtown at a recent Whitesburg community meeting. The students' report includes an inventory of assets and challenges, highlights resources, and offers a palette of design opportunities, and strategies for community directed corridor revitalization. The assessment lays out a foundation for Whitesburg to participate in the Environmental Law Institute’s BRIGHT program, and is a model for what other rural and coalfield communities could do.