Greensburg Eco-Town

Greensburg is a town located in Southwest Kansas in the USA, established in 1886, like most towns on the prairies it grew alongside the railroad. Greensburg is also home to the worlds largest hand dug well, Work began on the well in 1887 to provide a sustainable water source for the steam engines of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and Chicato, Rock Island and Pacific Railroads. The well was completed in 1888 at a depth of 109 feet (33 m) deep and 32 feet (9.8 m) in diameter. In 1939 it opened as a tourist attraction and is better known locally as the 'Big Well'. Greensburg is home to yet another quirky piece of history, a 1000lb Pallasite Meteorite which was discovered in a local cornfield which is located in the 'Big Well' museum.

At 9:45pm on May 4th 2007 an EF5 tonado estimated to be 1.7 miles in diameter, it struck the town head on destroying 95% of the town leaving the other 5% severely damaged, winds averaged 205mph making it one of the worst tornados in Kansan History.


Just days after the tornado struck, the community came together and decided to rebuild their community, they wanted to rebuild their town, but they didn't want to just replace what was there before, but build a better, stronger community for generations to come. They decided to rebuild sustainably, striving to become a model eco-town for the future. Greensburg-Greentown is a community based organisation which was set up to work side by side with local residents and local businesses in order to rebuild their homes and businesses in a green eco friendly way. Greensburg-Greentown also act as a representative to people outside of Greensburg who are interested in green initiatives, using the town as a showcase for businesses and people alike who are interested in going green or building in an eco friendly manner.

Here is a link to the towns building database which lists all the building projects that have been completed, and that are currently under construction, showing detailed information on thier green credenials. Greensburg Sustainable Building Database.

Here is a picture of Greensburg taken in January 2010, showing the progress made in just under 3 years.

From an architectural and even a socialogical point of view Greensburg is an interesting case, usually when a new town is built people move in and create some form of a community, or when new estates are built in existing towns, the new estate becomes a community within a community, but it is not always coherant and unified. It is very rare that an established community has the chance to completely rebuild itself, in fact we are still plagued in Britain by vain attempts by architects in the sixties an seventies to rebuild large parts of our towns and cities. In the case of Greensburg they have the change to build a better stronger community through architecture, by allocating areas for industrial, areas for commercial and areas for residence and parkland, they have the change to design the perfect town, but at the same time creating a Eco-model for the rest of us to learn from.

A lesson that can be learnt from Greensburg is that it is not a town or building that make a community, the people of Greensburg could have just up sticks and moved somewhere else but they chose not too, it is the people and in this case the perseverance of those people that makes Greensburg the town it still is today.