A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk about taking our vision beyond a single street retrofit to transforming communities at the Municipal Green Building Conference in Downey. Our lens is sustainable water management. The traditional complete streets concept focuses on making streets and neighborhoods pedestrian (and bicyclist) friendly – focusing on the human scale rather than the car scale, so to speak. Complete green streets look farther, to how we can bring nature back to neighborhoods. Urban water runoff and flooding are particular concerns, which can be solved by wholistic planning that takes into account climate, transportation, and the needs of the community. This is what we did in Sun Valley.Back to the Green Building Conference. If you are interested, the video of my presentation is available along with presentations by Mark Hanna of Geosyntec, Calvin Abe of Ahbe Landscape Architects, and Paula Daniels of the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works, all on the topic of complete, green streets. The session was moderated by Edward Belden, of the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council. Thanks much to the skillful videography John Gannon of Strikeout Studio.