Green Map System was initiated by Wendy Brawer in 1995, three years after her eco-design consultancy, Modern World Design, publishing the original Green Apple 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 600 communities in 55 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 and developed locally mapmaking models;
- 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;
- organizes and takes part in public Green Map events, locally and globally.

Download overview slideshow, the 2009 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. Said to be 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 - 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 eco-social innovation: a new kind of eco-media, it was universally understandable, resource efficient, and could be produced locally of greener materials. 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 GreenAppleMap.org. Wendy has led production of more than a dozen citywide and thematic editions, both in print and interactive, and NYC remains a proving ground for new concepts in Green Mapmaking.

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 California College of Arts, Carnegie-Mellon, Danish Design School, Glasgow School of Art, Hampshire College, RISD, Takaoka University, University of Dublin, University of Michigan, 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 are part of the 2010-2011 DESIS project on social innovation at Parsons The New School of Design. Pace University's tourism school utilizes Green Mapmaking to support planning in Paraty Brazil, and Columbia University's recent project connected the faith and justice community in a meaningful new way.

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 many workshops at the Smithsonian National Design Museum and the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education 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, dozens of 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 will soon have a mobile component to connect people everywhere with 'what's green nearby'?.

GreenAtlas.org shares 10 locally authored mapmaking stories, greatly extending the audience for this 2004 book, co-produced with Green Map Japan. Its format provided insights that informed the design of GreenMap.org's profile sections.

GreenAppleMap.org covers New York Green Map projects, including projects by youth and community groups as well as Green Map System. A redesign is being planned.

EcoCultural.info is this website. Re-launched in December 2009, your comments to web [at] greenmap [.] org and links 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 chapters 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 Green Apple Map's event page, along with other NYC events that Wendy has helped to organize. 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, 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.

Born an artist in Detroit Michigan, Wendy graduated from Cass Technical High School's arts program before moving west to University of Washington. She left the whirl of gallery shows, public art commissions and collaborative art projects when she moved to Tokyo in 1985. Creative freedom has always been a driver, leading Wendy to consider how her energy can contribute to the ecological, social and economic balance that assures that creative expressions and restorative actions thrive.

With a million questions and many possible answers, Wendy's now partnering up on an organic farm to bring resilience and nature into her life. Although she's a lifelong urbanite and total novice, permaculture practitioners and bountiful berries ripening in a perpetual motion valley abuzz with pollinators and a perennially flowing river are helping her understand how the world works from a new perspective. Find Pioneer Valley Organic Farm's fresh organic blueberries and raspberries at the Great Barrington Farmers Market in western Massachusetts.

Having transitioned from creating mixed media sculpture to eco design in 1989, Wendy's occasionally produced 3-dimensional works in the new millennium. One example is the SolSpherica, created with solar designer Amelia Amon for Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Winner of Art & Science Collaboration's competition and exhibited for six years in this hands-on museum, SolSpherica brought awareness of renewable energy's power, potential and lyrical beauty to a young audience.

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.

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 with her company, Modern World Design. 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.