Portland

Danish picturebook, Portland video show how to respect bicyclists

What bicycle-respecting streets, intersections, and neighborhoods look like is largely a mystery to most people, even those who cycle regularly. I’ve offered descriptions twice before. Since then, two wonderful new tools have been completed. StreetFilms.org, the awesome, New York-based outfit that makes movies about cycling, has posted a 30-minute ode to Portland’s bikability (linked above). […]

New report debunks libertarian attack on Portland city planning

A while back, a guy named Randal O’Toole at the libertarian Cato Institute put out a report "debunking" Portland, Ore.’s efforts to encourage dense, transit-oriented development. As Portland is at the forefront of such efforts, the report was taken as a debunking of New Urbanism in general and got lots and lots of press. The […]

15 Green Cities

These metropolises aren’t literally the greenest places on earth — they’re not necessarily dense with foliage, for one, and some still have a long way to go down the path to sustainability. But all of the cities on this list deserve recognition for making impressive strides toward eco-friendliness, helping their many millions of residents live […]

Blue lanes, cage locks, and cyclibraries

Separate bikeways are the lead actors in bike-friendly cities, but many supporting actors complete the cast: bikes on transit facilities, good traffic law enforcement, even bike "lifts" on steep hills. Three more worth mentioning are blue lanes, parking cages, and cyclibraries.

Blue lanes.

Is your town?

What if cities had no sidewalks and everyone walked on the road? Or, for urban recreation, they walked on a few scenic trails? What if the occasional street had a three-foot-wide "walking lane" painted on the asphalt, between the moving cars and the parked ones?

Well, for starters, no one would walk much. A hardy few might brave the streets, but most would stop at "walk?! in traffic?!"

Fortunately, this car-head vision is fiction for most pedestrians, but it's not far from nonfiction for bicyclists. Regular bikers are those too brave or foolish to be dissuaded by the prospect of playing chicken with two-ton behemoths. Other, less-ardent cyclists stick to bike paths; they ride for exercise, not transportation. Bike lanes, in communities where they exist, are simply painted beside the horsepower lanes.

People react reasonably: "bike?! in traffic?!" And they don't. "It's not safe" is what the overwhelming majority say when asked why they bike so little. (As it turns out, it's safer than most assume -- on which, more another day.)

So what would cities look like if we provided the infrastructure for safe cycling? What does "bike friendly" actually look like?

Making public transit work

Greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle.

So the obvious question: How come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors?

A couple

Here are two lists, for those of you into that kind of thing: First, Sustainlane — which seems to produce a list every few weeks, no? — has a list of the Top Ten Cities for Renewable Energy. That’s the cities that provide citizens with the most green power. They are: 1. Oakland, CA 2. […]

Don’t forget to Step It Up tomorrow

This was posted by my colleague Madeline Ostrander at our mothership blog, but I thought it belonged on Gristmill as well.

What do Washington Congressional Rep. Jay Inslee, the AFL-CIO, a car-sharing company, and a radio DJ have in common? What about swimmers doing a polar bear dip in the Willamette River, a Unitarian Church, and Portland Commissioner Eric Sten? They and thousands of others are, for the first time in history, united on climate change.

Founded by writer Bill McKibben, Step It Up is the largest and most diverse citizen day of action on climate change the U.S. has ever seen. With 1,300 gatherings in cities and small towns across the U.S., could Step It Up be the climate movement's turning point, its "Selma" or "bus boycott" as one activist suggested in yesterday's Oregonian? Step It Up organizers hope so, as the events catch a wide net of supporters -- companies, churches, national labor associations, peace groups, local governments, conservation organizations, and thousands of citizens collectively urging Congress to take action on climate.

In Seattle, nearly 50 partner groups -- including Grist; the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers; coalitions of peace activists and churches; Sightline Institute; the League of Women Voters; and the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations -- are bringing Rep. Jay Inslee together onstage with Presbyterian minister Lisa Domke, student activist Emily Duncanson, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, and King County Executive Ron Sims. Organizers are expecting thousands from the Puget Sound area to turn out for one-mile march ending in a rally and sustainability fair.

Congrats to Fargo!

Seattle is in 7th heaven. The Earth Day Network has issued its Urban Environment Report, which "scores the current environmental performance of 72 of our nation’s cities based on over 200 indicators, taking into account those populations which may have greater sensitivity or susceptibility to environmental, health, and social problems." The big winner overall? Well […]