Green Map System was initiated by Wendy Brawer in 1995, three years after her eco-design consultancy, Modern World Design, published the original Green Map of NYC. The concept quickly gained the creative support and involvement of a diverse network of designers, environmentalists, students, engaged citizens and civil servants.

Green Map System became truly global in 1997, with projects underway on every inhabited continent. In 2000, the movement became a not-for-profit organization that Wendy continues to direct. Now, more than 940 diverse communities in 65 countries are thinking globally and mapping locally, as seen at GreenMap.org.

Alongside the organization's diverse staff, interns and consultants, Wendy
- mentors Green Map projects as they get underway;
- synthesizes and shares the experiences through mapmaking models and strategic consulting;
- promotes the resulting Green Maps and other impacts on communities with books, blogs, exhibits and websites;
- spearheads the development of new resources such as the acclaimed Open Green Map social mapping platform and mobile web and iPhone apps;
- organizes and takes part in public Green Map events, locally and globally.

Download an overview slideshow, the Impacts book and the Green Map Icon poster.

An innovator whose most important client is our common future, Wendy's original concepts include the collaboratively designed Green Map Icons that highlight, promote and link sites on every Green Map. One of the world's first universal symbol system for maps, this evolving lexicon paved the way for ongoing collaboration resulting in powerful yet practical resources that support inclusive participation in sustainable community development.

Thinking about designing a new green product for New York City's visitors, Wendy was inspired by those coming to the United Nations to plan the Earth Summit. In spring 1992, she mapped green stores, farmers markets, recycling sites, gardens, hot spots and heritage sites, guiding individuals to experience an unexpected side of the city. In creating the original Green Apple Map - with a lot of help from her friends and experts - Wendy gave everyone a new perspective, engaging both residents and tourists by highlighting NYC's signs of progress toward sustainability, promoting the city's enjoyable and healthy assets as well as raising awareness of challenging conditions.

This first Green Map turned out to be a powerful innovation: a new kind of eco-media, it was universally understandable, resource efficient, and shared a new perspective. Using this appealing map, people discovered, connected and got involved locally. Response to this original edition led to an updated map that gained international attention and how-to requests that sparked the global Green Map System.

Working with many different partners over the next years, Wendy turned the NYC edition into a model 'marketing service for the hometown environment', sharing tools with Green Map projects across the city and around the world. Youth- and community-made Green Apple Maps, university interactions, exhibits, cycling tours, videos, talks and workshops followed, as seen at GreenMapNYC.org. Wendy has led production of two dozen citywide and thematic editions, both in print and interactive, and NYC remains a proving ground for new concepts in Green Mapmaking. Applying organizing and communications skills, Wendy has contributed to numerous local projects, described in sections below.

Today, Wendy's integrated approach to risk reduction includes collaborating and advising on local projects that address energy (NYC's first Net Zero Passive House building and Solarize LES), bicycling (Bikes Ready and Local Spokes), green culture center concepts (the Stanton Building's Foresight Lab and Ranch on Rails) and community green infrastructure (Gardens Rising and Siempre Verde Garden).

Energy has been a passion for decades. In 2012, Wendy joined forces with her husband Ray Sage and Paul Castrucci, Architect to form Further, Inc. Together, they built the award-winning R-951 Residence, a self-powered three family row house completed in 2015 in Brooklyn. Its Passive House, solar and other features are described here. She is involved in the emerging Solarize LES program and part of the all-women development company Collective for Community, Culture and Environment LLC, too.

Wendy is an adviser to Sol Design Lab led by Beth Ferguson in Austin/San Francisco, which creates public space solar charging stations. Wendy is co-repurposing the SolSpherica for public charging, too. This hand-on solar sculpture was created with Amelia Amon for Liberty Science Center in 2000, and will soon be located at Lower East Side Ecology Center's East River Park location in Manhattan. Bicycling for the climate, social equity and emergency response are part of her mix, too.

Wendy was a partner in an organic farm from 2009-2015, and loves to work with land and nature. She is currently a member of Siempre Verde Community Garden. She's this garden's liaison to Gardens Rising. Working with NYC Community Garden Coalition and LUNGs, Wendy was part of the development team that received a $2 million NY State GOSR grant for this community green infrastructure project.

Wendy Brawer co-taught one of the very first sustainable design courses in New York, a "think and do tank" with Mark Seltman at Cooper Union, starting in 1990. This first course led to invitations to interact with university students at dozens of schools, including School of Visual Art, California College of Arts, Carnegie-Mellon, Danish Design School, Glasgow School of Art, Hampshire College, RISD, Takaoka University, University of Dublin, University of Michigan, University of Victoria, Finlandia University, and others.

Her leadership of Green Map led to Wendy's 2002 "Charting Sustainability in the Real World" course at New York University (find the syllabus at GreenMap.org/universities), and the university's 2009-10 Green Grant extended mapmaking resources to NYU classes and Bobst Library. Wendy and Green Map took part in the 2010-2011 DESIS project on social innovation at Parsons The New School of Design. Columbia University's project connected the faith and justice communities in a meaningful new way. She's part of the Community and Green Mapping program at University of Victoria, too.

Since 1998, Green Map staff has developed tools for K12 education, including modules, multimedia and more, as seen at GreenMap.org/youth. Wendy has provided workshops at the Smithsonian National Design Museum and the Cloud Institute in New York, and presented with local Green Map projects in Shanghai, Hiroshima, Victoria BC, Dublin and other places.

Through the mapmaking experience, participants have built skills including critical assessment and eco literacy, design, and communications, green marketing, social innovation and organizing, project management, resource efficiency, citizenship and community engagement, awareness, planning and visioning.

Over the years, 125 interns have had direct education and hands-on training with Wendy, some becoming staff, board members, or leaders of their own Green Map projects.

GreenMap.org has been through numerous incarnations, starting with a single page about Green Map System back in 1995. From the beginning, Wendy conceived a simple website so people with minimal internet assess could interact with its many resources. Continually re-created with help from Green Map staff, Mapmakers, interns, friends, and most currently, Openflows Community Technology Lab, the web has been crucial as the primary means of promoting Green Mapmaking and developing its adaptable tools with a far-flung network.

Today, GreenMap.org has two major sections:

Local: supports hundreds of Green Mapmakers with a robust tool center while providing the public and media with information on the movement and each locally-led project.

Open: the interactive mapmaking platform that transforms local information into global interaction. Launched in June 2009, the potential of this resource grows daily.

Thanks to pair network's donated dedicated carbon neutral server and Drupal's open source content management system, GreenMap.org also has a mobile component to connect people everywhere with 'what's green nearby'. Go to GreenMap.org/app for the iPhone app, or visit GreenMap.org on any smartphone to explore or suggest new sites.

GreenAtlas.org shares 10 locally authored mapmaking stories, greatly extending the audience for this 2004 book, co-produced with Green Map Japan.

GreenMapNYC.org covers New York Green Map projects, including projects by youth and community groups as well as Green Map System. Relaunched in 2012, thanks to OTTO NY, Oceanic and DesigNYC.

EcoCultural.info is this website. Updated in early 2015, your comments to web [at] greenmap [.] org are welcome.

Wendy's first press pass in the early 90's led to magazines stories in In Business, Design World, Whole Earth, Places, Rana and Innovation. Her professional association newsletter articles helped raise awareness among grantmakers, economists, industrial and interior designers. She has contributed to books such as Aaris Sharin's SustainAble: A Handbook for Graphic Designers and Joan Rothchild's Design and Feminism: Re-visioning Spaces, Places, and Everyday Things. She's blogged for Worldchanging New York, introduced the travel chapter for Greenopia NYC, and co-written for Orion Society's Stories from the Grassroots, among other projects.

Wendy has also collaborated on book production with Green Mapmakers in the Americas and Asia, available in the Green Map Store.

'Green Map Impacts' includes 18 locally authored richly-illustrated stories. Led by Keiko Nakagawa of Green Map Aichi and Misako Yomosa of Green Map Japan, both Japanese (2008) and English (2009) editions frame diverse outcomes and ongoing success stories.

'Mapping Our Common Ground' is a collaborative effort led by Maeve Lydon and Ken Josephson at University of Victoria involving Canadian, American, Cuban and Brazilian Green Mapmakers. English (2 editions, 2005 and 2008) and Spanish editions (2007) capture community-based methodologies. Portuguese is expected next.

The 'Green Map Atlas', a Green Map System and Green Map Japan 2004 production, yielded a bilingual book, CD, website and traveling exhibit. Over 200,000 copies were downloaded in the first two years. Several chapters appeared in Chinese in "Energetic Green Map Movement" published in 2005 in Taiwan by Society of Wilderness.

Writing about Wendy is in the Media section and in GreenMap.org's Press Center.

Wendy Brawer has presented her work and addressed critical sustainability and social issues at more than 50 conferences and universities (sampling below and on her resume). A featured speaker at conferences, she's participated in panels, led breakout sessions, keynoted, moderated and dialogued, pitched new ideas, presented multimedia and demonstrated websites, led eco-design tours and engaged classrooms.

In addition to conferences, public events and university talks, Wendy has addressed corporate audiences on Green Mapmaking to meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals, reducing climate impacts and product greening, topics she has followed since her stint as Chair of the Industrial Designers Society of America's Eco Committee in the mid-1990s.

Green Map's annual Green Apple Cycling Tour has introduced participants to a diversity of eco and social innovations. Find rides listed on the GreenMapNYC's homepage. Her walking tours have delighted scores of international and local educators and students.

Putting Vibrant Communities on the Map was the focus of Green Map's 2004 exhibition at the Urban Center Gallery. Coinciding with the publication of the Green Map Atlas, this program included education and ecotourism evenings. Wendy has created exhibits for many different settings, including museums, outdoor events and conferences.

Presentations include: Seoul Design Olympiad (KR), Where 2.0, EcoCity World Summit, TED University, Planetwork, COP 10 Biodiversity NGO Forum (JP), US Social Forum, Klimaforum (DK), Bioneers, Community University Expo (CA), American Planning Association National Conference, European Congress of International Schools (FR), Aichi EXPO 2005 (JP), Social Venture Network, DEMI Launch (UK), Vision Plus (JP), Ethics of Sustainable Development (CU), Future of Cities at United Nations Social Summit (DK), ReThinking Design & Technology.

While directing Green Map System's trajectory and program development since 1995, Wendy's experience includes consulting on waste reduction, product development, community building and social inclusion. Two examples:

When Wendy became Time Square's first greening consultant in the mid-90's, she tackled the ever-present swirls of litter and brought dignity to struggling recyclers. Turning each empty bottle or can from an eyesore into a social and eco resource, she designed, built and tested 9 'self-emptying' recycling bins for 42nd Street. In the pilot phase, these bins captured 70% of that waste stream and were included in exhibits and design courses. Making Broadway auto-free was among the concepts she presented to the client, the Times Square BID. Although they said it could not be done, in 2009, the City made it a reality!

As the greening consultant to Manhattan Plaza, a 1,700 unit apartment complex, Wendy worked with management, staff, resident adults and kids on waste and toxics reduction, energy and waste reduction, biodiversity protection and awareness raising. Her water conservation campaign led to a reduction of 65 gallons of water per apartment per day, yielding a 50 million gallon savings over 15 months.

New projects that benefit from Wendy's experience include Local Spokes, which aims to Create a new vision around cycling in her community, Lower East Side, and Chinatown; E3NYC, a cleantech catalyst project; and Real Returns, a clean tech collaborative also took root in 2010 Read the Real Returns white paper.

In addition to her role in developing Green Map's corporate responsibility mapping program, as a consultant, Wendy has introduced architects, companies and agencies to green materials and processes. Contact her to learn more about applying her skills and awareness of trends and applications of sustainable design solutions to your company or community needs.

Wendy has been a juror for design competitions including the Social Design Network's Bicycle Accessories (2008), Metropolis Next Generation (2005); the International Design Resource Awards (2001, 1996-97), National Art and Design Competition for Street Trees (1998) and others.