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Notes Getting around: 'Fewer drivers among urban youth in Metro Vancouver'
From The Vancouver Sun:
Whitney Sharp always expected she would be driving when she turned 16. But five years later, she has yet to make it behind the wheel — or even to a driver licensing branch.
…Sharp is representative of what TransLink has deemed a “noticeable drop” in the proportion of young adults aged 16-24 who are forgoing a traditional rite of passage: getting a driver’s licence.
Only 50 per cent of young people aged 16-19 and 80 per cent of those 20-29 had a driver’s licence in 2011 — down from 60 per cent and 90 per cent respectively in 1999 — according to TransLink’s latest trip diary, which surveyed almost 18,000 households on their commuting patterns, including how many trips they made in a 24-hour period.
…
There’s no specific reasons given for the decline, but the TransLink analysis suggests it could be attributed to several factors, including a combination of the graduated licensing program and TransLink’s U-Pass program — a cheap universal pass that gives students access to bus, SeaBus and SkyTrain services within Metro Vancouver — or a “generational behaviour change because of shifts in values and attitudes.”
“The notion of getting a car and the ability to drive as a rite of passage is really eroding,” said Larry Frank, professor and J. Armand Bombardier chair in Sustainable Urban Transportation Systems at the University of B.C. “It’s an indication that our degree of car dependence, at least in this region, is declining.”
It appears teens no longer view a restored Mustang as the ticket to independence, said Maria Su, senior manager of research analytics with TransLink. The high price of gas and car ownership, on one hand, and the U-Pass program and better transit opportunities on the other, she said, are likely contributing to the trend, which “is not unique to Vancouver.”
“It used to be when people got out of school, the first thing they did was get a used car because it was a sign of freedom,” Su said. “Now you can meet up with a friend without a car.”
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo source: Streetsblog DC)
Related:
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Notes"We’re used to the notion of sharing libraries, public parks, and train cars. But in many ways, American culture in particular drifted away from sharing as a value when we spread out from city centers and into the suburbs. Molly Turner, the director of public policy for short-term rental lodging website Airbnb, evokes the iconic image of Richard Nixon, in Moscow, introducing Nikita Khrushchev to the modern marvel of the state-of-the-art washing machine, available for private consumption in every American home. Beginning with the era of that washing machine, Turner argues, we forgot how to share.
We came to prize instead personal ownership – of multiple cars, of large homes with private backyards and space inside for appliances that would never fit in a modest city walk-up. Today, this kind of bald consumerism is considered almost tacky. But the reasons underlying that cultural shift reveal why we’re witnessing a true change in paradigm. Much has transformed in the last few years alone: the economy, technology, and the allure of cities themselves.
“What’s really going on here is the urbanization of the world and the reurbanization of American cities,” Turner says. “Either consciously or subconsciously, [people] are realizing that that involves the public realm, the commons, sharing goods and services and infrastructure. And I think that kind of bleeds into your personal life.” In other words, if you’ll share a subway car, why not a kitchen?
This move back into city centers also coincided with the Great Recession. Those big houses and multiple cars, it turns out, were beyond many of our means. And it’s no coincidence, Turner says, that Airbnb – a company founded around shared housing – was born in 2008, just as the U.S. was entering a recession built on a housing crisis. For many Airbnb members, the spare rooms they were able to rent through the service helped them keep their homes. City living, for all its allure, is expensive, but the sharing economy makes it possible for more people, whether they’re sharing a car because they can’t afford to own one, or sharing a bike because they’ve got nowhere to store it.
"A quote from The Atlantic Cities article, ‘Share Everything:Why the Way We Consume Has Changed Forever’. Check out the rest of the article here.
Image source: Collaborative Consumption
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Photos
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Noteshere are some recent reflections from around town
I’ve got some more pics here if you’re interested in checking ‘em out. -
Link
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Notes Tools (to Build) for Change: 'SustainaWiki'SustainaWiki is a wiki site designed with one thing in mind: offering information about sustainability to anyone who needs it! Don’t see a page you’re looking for? Make a username and create the page!
I had a quick look around SustainaWiki and it appears quite new with much of the content fairly limited and using 2012 references. So far there are pages addressing energy, food, home improvement, how-to guides, landscaping, technology, transportation, and waste management. If you’ve got some time and knowledge to share… well, you know what to do. If you need some guidance, you might want to check out the users guide.
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NotesIdeas for the Future | ‘It’s Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and the Moral Obligation to the Future’ (Video)
From SFU Continuing Studies via Youtube:
Although climate change is a scientific and technological issue, it is also fundamentally a moral issue, and it calls for a moral response.
In the spring of 2012, Kathleen Dean Moore of Oregon State University joined us at SFU Vancouver to deliver a lecture called It’s Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and the Moral Obligation to the Future.
She addressed several questions: Why has climate-change science elicited such stunning indifference? What calls us to act? How can we respond to the crisis in ways that honor duties of compassion, justice, and respect for human rights? How can we discuss these values across differences? How do we live when we truly understand that we live in complete dependence on an Earth that is interconnected, interdependent, finite, resilient, and heartbreakingly beautiful? -
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Notes"In the last five years, China has built 20,000 miles of expressways, finishing the construction of 12 national highways a whopping 13 years ahead of schedule and at a pace four times faster than the United States built its interstate highway system. Over the last decade, Shanghai alone has built some 1,500 miles of road, the equivalent of three Manhattans. China’s urban population is projected to grow by 350 million people by 2020, effectively adding today’s entire U.S. population to its cities in less than a decade. China has already passed the United States as the world’s largest car market, and by 2025, the country will need to pave up to an estimated 5 billion square meters of road just to keep moving.
China’s love affair with the car has blossomed into a torrid romance. In April, nearly a million people poured into the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition to coo over the latest Audis, BMWs, and Toyotas. But China is in danger of making the same mistakes the United States made on its way to superpower status — mistakes that have left Americans reliant on foreign oil from unstable parts of the world, staggering under the cost of unhealthy patterns of living, and struggling to overcome the urban legacy of decades of inner-city decay.
The choices China makes in the years ahead will have an immense impact not only on the long-term viability, livability, and energy efficiency of its cities, but also on the health of the entire planet. Unfortunately, much of what China is building is based on outdated Western planning ideas that put its cars at the center of urban life, rather than its people. And the bill will be paid in the form of larger waistlines, reduced quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion.
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The first three paragraphs of Peter Calthorpe’s recent article for Foreign Policy magazine, ‘Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction’. Calthorpe is a renowned San Francisco based urban planner and architect and a founding member of the Congress of New Urbanism. You can check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo source: Inhabitat)
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Notes"You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep."Oromo proverb
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Notes
Around Town: Granville Street, just south of West Georgia (Downtown)
earlier this week
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NotesI usually stick to sustainability and city themed posts on this blog of mine, but this conversation between a gay Vietnam War veteran and U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney definitely deserves an exception. This vet is a hero. Full stop.
P.S. It’s worth watching all the way to the end too.(Source: ABC News via Upworthy)
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Notes Tools for change: 'How to save the planet — in 10 not-so-easy steps'
I recently stumbled upon this article from Postmedia’s award-winning national science writer, Margaret Munro. It was written in advance of June’s Rio+20 summit, which was widely viewed to have achieved limited results. That said, the article offers a good summary of some of the big systemic changes that we’re likely going to have to pull off on the long road to building a sustainable and resilient future. In other words, it’s going to take a whole lot more than riding a bike, recycling, and using cloth shopping bags.
The article has a bit of a Canadian focus, but the steps are universal:
1. Start a revolution
2. Energy game change
3. Put a price on carbon
4. Overhaul corporate motives and mindsets
5. Green Canada’s blackened record
6. Transform cities
7. Connect the dots before you buy
8. Eat less meat
9. Embrace education (and contraception)
10. Get politically active
You can read the rest of the article and an explanation of each of the steps here, but I’ll post the first one here as an example:
“For most of the last century, economic growth was fuelled by what seemed to be a certain truth: the abundance of natural resources. We mined our way to growth. We burned our way to prosperity. We believed in consumption without consequences,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. He went on to describe it as a “recipe for national disaster. It is a global suicide pact.”
“We need a revolution,” he said. “Revolutionary thinking. Revolutionary action. A free-market revolution for global sustainability”.
Related:
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Third Year of Drought Threatens Southwestern Oklahoma! Meanwhile … O.K. Sen. Inhofe still says global warming’s a hoax @ State Impact
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Young Monk! by Mardy Photography
Siem Reap, Cambodia
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Mather Work Incentive Poster
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