Climate Cities
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Some ideas for green resolutions that are achievable, meaningful, and maybe even novel
New Year's resolutions, as we all know, are almost entirely pointless -- made in one breath, forgotten in the next. So in that spirit of general futility, I offer a few ideas for green resolutions that, either through novelty or just ease of use, may inspire more than a passing commitment. Please leave your own ideas below.
Idea #1: help make "livable streets" a reality in your community
All politics is local, said Tip O'Neill, but most of us still don't pay much attention to local politics. Issues at a community level are often driven by the triumvirate of homeowners, business owners and car owners -- good people, no doubt, but narrow in their interests.
This won't change if you don't help make it change. Happily, a thriving network of community organizers is doing great work to promote a people- and environment-centered development agenda, ranging from this new bus system in Cleveland to this bike-sharing program in Tulsa to this massive street festival in New York.
Support their good work! A few ideas for getting involved:
- Get smarter about development issues by spending some time with the great resources at the Livable Streets Network. Subscribe to their blog, subscribe to an affiliated blog focused on your community, watch their films, or read and contribute to their wiki.
- Find or start a local group using the Livable Street Network's online tools.
- Get involved with a local organization like Transportation Alternatives (based in New York). Or support them financially by attending some of their fun events.
Idea #2: eat more plants
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Polishing turds is expensive
Great piece on why LEED-certified houses typically come at a premium.
(h/t Sam Smith)
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Stimulus spending going to roads?
Reason to worry about the stimulus bill: Missouri’s plan to spend $750 million in federal money on highways and nothing on mass transit in St. Louis doesn’t square with President-elect Barack Obama’s vision for a revolutionary re-engineering of the nation’s infrastructure. Utah would pour 87 percent of the funds it may receive in a new […]
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Making Bulgaria look good
James Howard Kunstler, oft derided as seeking to return America to a pre-industrial state, actually wants to return the country to the glory years of the industrial era, when the major components of our industrial infrastructure were in place and flourishing while Progressive Era reforms were making cities more habitable and humane. This allowed us […]
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Study finds that tolls and parking charges are key to ease traffic
Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, put out a report on how to get traffic moving faster. They considered lots of the standard solutions — improving signal timing, clearing accidents quickly, encouraging telecommuting, and so forth — and found that many of them could, in fact, provide some temporary congestion relief. […]
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Reintroducing regionalism to green building
Ever since green building was wrested from the hands of hippies and tucked safely in the technology sector — there are probably more articles about it in Wired than Mother Earth News these days — we’ve been under the impression that the greenest buildings are the newest buildings. Those nifty, skin-thin photovoltaic panels and that […]
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Transit ridership up; everyone agrees it should be funded
This week the Washington Post reported that mass transit ridership is rocketing upward — "the largest quarterly increase in public transportation ridership in 25 years" — even in the face of falling gas prices. This correction that now sits atop the story is amusing: This article about an increase in mass-transit ridership incorrectly said transit […]
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SanFran anti-transit activist puts $1 million between the city and bike infrastructure
Streetsblog brings word of a bafflesome episode in the life of San Francisco: Two-and-a-half years after a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from adding any new bicycle infrastructure to its streets, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and the San Francisco Planning Department have released a 1353-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) […]
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L.A. will go big with solar power under mayor’s plan
Los Angeles will source one-tenth of its energy from solar power by 2020 under a plan unveiled Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Considering the town’s many celebrities, a plan to tap star power is certainly forthcoming.
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Vast majority of feds’ flex-fuel cars still run on straight gasoline
The federal government has poured billions of dollars into building up a fleet of 112,000 flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on an ethanol blend — but the attempt to move away from fossil fuels has so far largely failed, as 92 percent of the vehicles still run on straight gasoline.