What's Your 'Elevator Pitch' for Greener, Healthier Cities?

"For better or worse, we live in the age of the sound bite, when even the most intellectually complicated subjects must, to be understood, be simplified to a couple of easily communicated sentences. It’s all about hyper-short attention spans, the 140-character Tweet, and the 'elevator speech' that you can present as you and your audience descend three or four floors on your way to exit the building for lunch," writes Kaid Benfield.

Benfield's pitch for the Washington D.C. region where he lives: "In the region as a whole, we need to find a way to grow and prosper that doesn’t put so many cars on the road and that sits more harmoniously with nature. In the inner city, we need to preserve and strengthen our older neighborhoods, and to do so in a way that benefits longtime residents as well as newcomers. These things are easier said than done, but that’s why we need more people working on them and carefully putting better approaches into place." [Emphasis from the original.]

Benfield goes on to consider the inherent vagaries in any such elevator speech.