planted city

Infographic | Transportation in Cities: ‘The United Bike Lanes of America’

(Source: GOOD Magazine)

A quote from the Forbes article, ‘Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year’.

Related:

~ Bicycling Magazine’s new ranking of ‘America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities’.

(Photo credit: Bicycling Magazine)

Three paragraphs from Thomas Homer-Dixon’s recent article in the Globe & Mail, ‘All’s not lost, Ontario. The future is green, not black’. Homer-Dixon is the director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and the author of a number of books including, ‘Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future’, ‘The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization’, and ‘The Ingenuity Gap’. You can watch, listen and read about his work here.  

(Photo credit: Eco-News)

From USA Today:

Almost three years after the official end of a recession that kept people from moving and devastated new suburban subdivisions, people continue to avoid counties on the farthest edge of metropolitan areas, according to Census estimates out today.

The financial and foreclosure crisis forced more people to rent. Soaring gas prices made long commutes less appealing. And high unemployment drew more people to big job centers. As the nation crawls out of the downturn, cities and older suburbs are leading the way.

Population growth in fringe counties nearly screeched to a halt in the year that ended July 1, 2011. By comparison, counties at the core of metro areas are growing faster than the nation as a whole.

…

During the ’70s gas shortage and the ’80s savings and loan industry crisis, some predicted the end of suburban sprawl. It didn’t happen then, but current trends could change the nation’s growth patterns permanently.

Aging Baby Boomers, who have begun to retire, and Millennials, who are mostly in their teens and 20s, are more inclined to live in urban areas, McIlwain says.

“I’m not sure we’re going to see outward sprawl even if the urge to sprawl continues,” he says. “Counties are getting to the point that they don’t have the money to maintain the roads, water, sewer. … This is a century of urbanization.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Map source: US Census Bureau - 2010 Census via USA Today)

Getting Around: ‘Paris EV and Bike Sharing Programs’ 

From Translogic:

In a city as densely populated as Paris, driving your own car around is about as good of an idea as speaking English to every French person you encounter. Fortunately, Paris and similar cities are setup with substantial public transit systems. But for those moments when you need a car or bike, Paris has you covered.

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Vélib’ is a new bike-sharing program that started in 2007 and has since grown into a city-wide alternative transit system. There are now almost 20,000 bikes that live at about 1,200 bike stations. These stations are scattered all around Paris’ city center, on average about 1,000 ft from one another. This kind of availability allows for quick and easy transportation, without having to hunt down bikes or places to lock them up.

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If something bigger than a bike with basket is required, Paris also has an extensive car-sharing program called Autolib’. Launching in December 2011, Autolib’ operates similarly to Vélib, but for cars. Bolloré’s Blue Car is the vehicle of choice because it is cheap and all electric. The design comes from Pininfarina, an Italian design firm noted for their work with Ferrari.

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At launch, 250 cars were placed around Paris in small convoys. All the cars connect to a terminal for charging and accounting. The terminal is used to rent and unlock the vehicle. Drivers can go up to 150 miles on a single charge and speeds can hit 80 mph — but don’t ever expect to go that fast around Paris. These cars are more for commuting, when you need to carry a lot of things, or need to go somewhere that public transit doesn’t go.
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When drivers are finished, they bring the car back to an Autolib’ station and plug in. The car can fully recharge in 8 hours. The 30 kWh lithium-polymer battery is designed with frequent use in mind and can stand to last a long time.

From Atlantic Cities:

“Unfortunately for car companies,” Jordan Weissmann noted at TheAtlantic.com a couple weeks back, “today’s teens and twenty-somethings don’t seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They’re not even particularly keen on driving.”

Now a major new report from Benjamin Davis and Tony Dutzik at the Frontier Group and Phineas Baxandall, at the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, documents this unprecedented trend across a wide variety of indicators.

Their two big findings about young people and driving:

• The average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) in the U.S. decreased by 23 percent between 2001 and 2009, falling from 10,300 miles per capita to just 7,900 miles per capita in 2009.
• The share of 14 to 34-year-olds without a driver’s license increased by 5 percentage points, rising from 21 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2010, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Young people are also making more use of transit, bikes, and foot power to get around. In 2009, 16 to 34-year-olds took 24 percent more bike trips than they took in 2001. They walked to their destinations 16 percent more often, while their passenger miles on transit jumped by 40 percent.

Check out the rest of the article to read about the factors driving this shift in getting around. 

(Photo credit: Atlantic Cities)

A quote from the Shareable article, ‘The Boom in Cycling Benefits Everyone, Not Just Bicyclists’

(Photo credit: Shareable)

Clean Energy Future: ‘Solar Cheaper Than Oil in Long Run’

From Bloomberg:

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Ali Al-Nuaimi, a member of one of the ruling royal families in the United Arab Emirates, talks about his efforts to change the way his country makes and consumes energy, and the outlook for the growth of renewable energy sources. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.”

Al-Nuaimi was also recently profiled by CNN in the article, ‘From polluter to protector: The UAE’s Green Sheikh’.

(Photo credit: Masdar City)

Resilient Cities: Rethinking the Urban Landscape

From The New America Foundation:

The ability to bounce back, to absorb shocks, to persevere, to retain functionality over time, to endure, to adapt, to succeed, to survive, to sustain… so many verbs are conjured up by the term “resilience.” Whether we’re talking about our bodies, our minds, our communities, our institutions or our natural environment, the R-word provides a conceptual framework for designing a better tomorrow. Please join us for a wide-ranging inquiry on what it means to be resilient and what a resilient future could look like.

The discussion features:

Kaid Benfield – @Kaid_at_NRDC
Director of Sustainable Communities, Natural Resources Defense Council

Justin Hollander – @justinhollander
Professor, Tufts University
Author, Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation, and Urban Planning in the American Sunbelt

Sander van der Leeuw – @ASUGreen
Dean, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Co-Chair, Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative, Arizona State University

Moderator
Andrés Martinez – @NewAmerica
Vice President and Editorial Director, New America Foundation

(Image credit: Common Current)

‘$4 Gas?’ 

(Source: Ed Stein Ink)