Hi,

This hopefully adds some useful information to the positive report
"Transit News from the USA" in Carfree Times #45... see:
http://www.carfree.com/cft/i045.html


***

*US Public Transport Usage Hits Fifty-Year High*

THE number of passengers using public transport in the United States has
topped 10 billion for the first time in 49 years, according to the
latest figures from the American Public Transportation Association
(Apta). Apta says public transport use rose by 30% between 1995 and
2006, more than double the rate of population growth (12%) and greater
than the increase in car journeys, which rose 24% in the same period.

Light rail witnessed the highest percentage increase of all modes in
2006, with passenger numbers increasing 5.6%. The highest increases
occurred in San Jose (36.6%), Minneapolis (18.4%), and New Jersey (20.1%).

Passenger numbers on the country’s metro networks also saw healthy
growth, with an increase of 4.1% nationally. Los Angeles saw a 10.8%
rise in passenger numbers, New Jersey had a 10.1% increase, and Atlanta
carried 6.3% more passengers than in 2005.

Commuter rail posted the third largest increase at 3.2%. The largest
increases were recorded in the Miami (21.3%) and Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania (18.9%) areas.

from: <http://www.railjournal.com/latenews.html>

--
--------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

Korunní 72
CZ-10100 Praha 10
Czech Republic

++420 605 915 970
++420 222 517 832
Skype: toddedelman

edelman@...
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network

Hi all german-understanding group-members,

today the new carfree quarter "Nippes" in Cologne (still under construction)
was in the national radio DLF. This is really great, because DLF is heard by
decisionmakers.

As part of a larger development they are building ~400 carfree housing
units, some of them as pure eco-houses, (and more car-conventional)
At the rim they will add ~80 parking places (so with this key of 0,2
the project is still carfree by definition), also they provide a mobility
agency. First residents are moving in.

The initiators demanded zero parking places, but the investor refused that,
and unfortunately the city followed him. The investor said in the beginning
(some years ago), without those parking places he would get marketing
problems, but the truth is (what isn`t said in the radio), that the
investor`s prices are much higher compared to the Cologne situation.
However, that didn`t stop the whole thing, now there are enough people who
want to live carfree in Nippes. Seems the car garages at the rim will be
used from car-owners in the neighbourhood.

And, btw, the eco-buildings were sold first.

websites (all in german only):
- from the initiators:
http://www.autofreie-siedlung-koeln.de/

- from the first carfree residents:
http://www.nachbarn60.de/

- from the investor:
http://www.stellwerk60.de/

more links to Nippes:
http://www.autofrei-wohnen.de/InitiativenD.html#Koeln-Nippes

cheers,
Markus
http://www.autofrei-wohnen.de/homeEngl.html

--------------------------

Die autofreie Siedlung Köln

Audiofile (950 kb):
http://ondemand-mp3.dradio.de/file/dradio/2007/03/20/dlf_200703201417.mp3

Sendezeit: 20.03.2007 14:17
Autor: Denecke, Axel
Programm: Deutschlandfunk (DLF)
Sendung: Deutschland heute
Länge: 04:02 Minuten

--------------------------

Die im Beitrag von Hans-Georg Kleinmann erwähnte Studie wurde in Nürnberg
durchgeführt. Nach dieser vergleichenden Wohnumfeld-Studie* sind die Kinder
des autofreien Wohnquartiers "P" in ihrer Entwicklung den Kindern des
konventionellen Nachbarquartiers "U" um  knapp 2 Jahre voraus:

(...) Besonders hervorzuheben ist die Feststellung, daß das Alter, in dem
Kinder regelmäßig ohne Begleitung in das Wohnumfeld gehen, in P wesentlich
niedriger als in U liegt. In P verläßt ein Kind im Durchschnitt mit 3,8
Jahren, in U mit 5,6 Jahren das Haus allein! (...) Eine ergänzende Frage
ergab, daß viele Kinder in P die ganze Nachbarschaft besuchen dürfen,
während Kinder in U häufig von den Eltern einen Baublock als maßgebende
Grenze gesetzt bekommen. (...)*

* Quelle:
Margit Nützel: "Nutzung und Bewertung des Wohnumfeldes in Großwohnsiedlungen
am Beispiel der Nachbarschaften U und P in Nürnberg-Langwasser"
Hrsg. Prof. Dr. Rolf Monheim; Reihe: Arbeitsmaterialien zur Raumordnung und
Raumplanung, Heft 119; Universität Bayreuth 1993, Abteilung Angewandte
Stadtgeographie, Fachgruppe Geowissenschaften.

*

Der Stellplatzschüssel von ca 0,2 (ca 80 Stellplätze auf ca 400 autofreie
Wohnungen) entspricht noch gerade der üblichen Definition für autofreie
Siedlungen:
http://www.autofrei-wohnen.de/Definition.html

*

http://www.land-der-ideen.de/CDA/ort_des_tages,1987,1,,de.html?action=detail&id=\
1646

*

Hello,

I was recently at a conference in Szentendre, Hungary, which was a
consultation of the European Commission with various stakeholders, in
view to prepare a green paper on urban transport.

The good news is that the public consultation has been included on the
website of the EU Commission's Directorate-General for Energy and
Transport. There is a questionnaire that can be filled out, which
invites input on this area. It is a great opportunity for people in
the carfree movement to make our voices heard. There is room in the
questionnaire to add one's own thoughts and suggestions, thus
encouraging the Commission to place a higher emphasis on quality
carfree urban space, among other things, is definitely possible.

Information about the green paper and the questionnaire can be found here:

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/clean/green_paper_urban_transport/public_consultat\
ion_en.htm

Regards

Justin Hyatt

The Carfree Development module (3e) by Lloyd Wright has been translated
to Chinese language by CATS/Custrec for GTZ SUTP and is now available
for download from www.sutp.org (www.sutp.cn for Chinese users) -
documents section. Registration is needed to download this document, as
with more than 350 documents available from www.sutp.org and www.sutp.cn
. The module is part of the Sourcebook on Sustainable Transport for
Policy-makers, and this Chinese translation now completes 23 modules
translated from the complete Sourcebook. The full Sourcebook has
currently 24 modules and is also available in English (24 modules),
Spanish (23 modules) and other modules in different world languages.

Kind regards
/Sunny
GTZ-SUTP/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This message was sent to you by rickrise@...:

I thought you might be interested in this feature in Grist.

Keep Your Eyes on the Size, by Stacy Mitchell. The impossibility of a green
Wal-Mart.

<http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2007/03/28/mitchell/index.html?source=fri\
end>

For more environmental news, check out the Grist Magazine homepage:

<http://www.grist.org/>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This message was sent to you by rickrise@...:

I thought you might be interested in this feature in Grist.

Keep Your Eyes on the Size, by Stacy Mitchell. The impossibility of a green
Wal-Mart.

<http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2007/03/28/mitchell/index.html?source=fri\
end>

For more environmental news, check out the Grist Magazine homepage:

<http://www.grist.org/>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

I didn't read all of this, but the prescription for
depression seems to be fun, in public, with lots of
other people (i.e., community festivals). No cars,
of course.

One more reason....

Regards,

Joel



http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2047969,00.html


How we learned to stop having fun



We used to know how to get together and really let our hair down. Then, in the
early 1600s, a mass epidemic of depression broke out - and we've been living
with it ever since. Something went wrong, but what? Barbara Ehrenreich unpicks
the causes of our unhappiness

Monday April 2, 2007
The Guardian


Beginning in England in the 17th century, the European world was stricken by
what looks, in today's terms, like an epidemic of depression. The disease
attacked both young and old, plunging them into months or years of morbid
lethargy and relentless terrors, and seemed - perhaps only because they wrote
more and had more written about them - to single out men of accomplishment and
genius. The puritan writer John Bunyan, the political leader Oliver Cromwell,
the poets Thomas Gray and John Donne, and the playwright and essayist Samuel
Johnson are among the earliest and best-known victims. To the medical
profession, the illness presented a vexing conundrum, not least because its
gravest outcome was suicide. In 1733, Dr George Cheyne speculated that the
English climate, combined with sedentary lifestyles and urbanisation, "have
brought forth a class of distemper with atrocious and frightful symptoms, scarce
known to our ancestors, and never rising to such fatal heights, and afflicting
such numbers in any known nation. These nervous disorders being computed to make
almost one-third of the complaints of the people of condition in England."

To the English, the disease was "the English malady". But the rainy British
Isles were not the only site visited by the disease; all of Europe was
afflicted.

The disease grew increasingly prevalent over the course of the 20th century,
when relatively sound statistics first became available, and this increase
cannot be accounted for by a greater willingness on the part of physicians and
patients to report it. Rates of schizophrenia, panic disorders and phobias did
not rise at the same time, for example, as they would be expected to if only
changes in the reporting of mental illness were at work. According to the World
Health Organisation, depression is now the fifth leading cause of death and
disability in the world, while ischemic heart disease trails in sixth place.
Fatalities occur most dramatically through suicide, but even the mild form of
depression - called dysthemia and characterised by an inability to experience
pleasure - can kill by increasing a person's vulnerability to serious somatic
illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Far from being an affliction of the
famous and successful, we now know that the disease strikes the poor more often
than the rich, and women more commonly than men.

Just in the past few years, hundreds of books, articles and television specials
have been devoted to depression: its toll on the individual, its relationship to
gender, the role of genetic factors, the efficacy of pharmaceutical treatments.
But to my knowledge, no one has suggested that the epidemic may have begun in a
particular historical time, and started as a result of cultural circumstances
that arose at that time and have persisted or intensified since. The failure to
consider historical roots may stem, in part, from the emphasis on the celebrity
victims of the past, which tends to discourage a statistical, or
epidemiological, perspective. But if there was, in fact, a beginning to the
epidemic of depression, sometime in the 16th or 17th century, it confronts us
with this question: could this apparent decline in the ability to experience
pleasure be in any way connected with the decline in opportunities for pleasure,
such as carnival and other traditional festivities?

There is reason to think that something like an epidemic of depression in fact
began around 1600, or the time when the Anglican minister Robert Burton
undertook his "anatomy" of the disease, published as The Anatomy of Melancholy
in 1621. Melancholy, as it was called until the 20th century, is of course a
very ancient problem, and was described in the fifth century BC by Hippocrates.
Chaucer's 14th-century characters were aware of it, and late-medieval churchmen
knew it as "acedia". So melancholy, in some form, had always existed - and,
regrettably, we have no statistical evidence of a sudden increase in early
modern Europe, which had neither a psychiatric profession to do the diagnosing
nor a public health establishment to record the numbers of the afflicted. All we
know is that in the 1600s and 1700s, medical books about melancholy and
literature with melancholic themes were both finding an eager audience,
presumably at least in part among people who suffered from melancholy
themselves.

Increasing interest in melancholy is not, however, evidence of an increase in
the prevalence of actual melancholy. As the historian Roy Porter suggested, the
disease may simply have been becoming more stylish, both as a medical diagnosis
and as a problem, or pose, affected by the idle rich, and signifying a certain
ennui or detachment. No doubt the medical prejudice that it was a disease of the
gifted, or at least of the comfortable, would have made it an attractive
diagnosis to the upwardly mobile and merely out-of-sorts.

But melancholy did not become a fashionable pose until a full century after
Burton took up the subject, and when it did become stylish, we must still
wonder: why did this particular stance or attitude become fashionable and not
another? An arrogant insouciance might, for example, seem more fitting to an age
of imperialism than this wilting, debilitating malady; and enlightenment,
another well-known theme of the era, might have been better served by a mood of
questing impatience.

Nor can we be content with the claim that the apparent epidemic of melancholy
was the cynical invention of the men who profited by writing about it, since
some of these were self-identified sufferers themselves. Robert Burton
confessed, "I writ of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy." George
Cheyne was afflicted, though miraculously cured by a vegetarian diet of his own
devising. The Englishman John Brown, who published a bestselling
mid-19th-century book on the subject, went on to commit suicide. Something was
happening, from about 1600 on, to make melancholy a major concern of the reading
public, and the simplest explanation is that there was more melancholy around to
be concerned about.

And very likely the phenomena of this early "epidemic of depression" and the
suppression of communal rituals and festivities are entangled in various ways.
It could be, for example, that, as a result of their illness, depressed
individuals lost their taste for communal festivities and even came to view them
with revulsion. But there are other possibilities. First, that both the rise of
depression and the decline of festivities are symptomatic of some deeper,
underlying psychological change, which began about 400 years ago and persists,
in some form, in our own time. The second, more intriguing possibility is that
the disappearance of traditional festivities was itself a factor contributing to
depression.

One approaches the subject of "deeper, underlying psychological change" with
some trepidation, but fortunately, in this case, many respected scholars have
already visited this difficult terrain. "Historians of European culture are in
substantial agreement," Lionel Trilling wrote in 1972, "that in the late 16th
and early 17th centuries, something like a mutation in human nature took place."
This change has been called the rise of subjectivity or the discovery of the
inner self and since it can be assumed that all people, in all historical
periods, have some sense of selfhood and capacity for subjective reflection, we
are really talking about an intensification, and a fairly drastic one, of the
universal human capacity to face the world as an autonomous "I", separate from,
and largely distrustful of, "them". The European nobility had already undergone
this sort of psychological shift in their transformation from a warrior class to
a collection of courtiers, away from directness and spontaneity and toward a new
guardedness in relation to others. In the late 16th and 17th centuries, the
change becomes far more widespread, affecting even artisans, peasants, and
labourers. The new "emphasis on disengagement and selfconsciousness", as Louis
Sass puts it, makes the individual potentially more autonomous and critical of
existing social arrange-ments, which is all to the good. But it can also
transform the individual into a kind of walled fortress, carefully defended from
everyone else.

Historians infer this psychological shift from a number of concrete changes
occurring in the early modern period, first and most strikingly among the urban
bourgeoisie, or upper middle class. Mirrors in which to examine oneself become
popular among those who can afford them, along with self-portraits (Rembrandt
painted more than 50 of them) and autobiographies in which to revise and
elaborate the image that one has projected to others. In bourgeois homes, public
spaces that guests may enter are differentiated, for the first time, from the
private spaces - bedrooms, for example - in which one may retire to let down
one's guard and truly "be oneself". More decorous forms of entertainment - plays
and operas requiring people to remain immobilised, each in his or her separate
seat - begin to provide an alternative to the promiscuously interactive and
physically engaging pleasures of carnival. The very word "self", as Trilling
noted, ceases to be a mere reflexive or intensifier and achieves the status of a
freestanding noun, referring to some inner core, not readily visible to others.

The notion of a self hidden behind one's appearance and portable from one
situation to another is usually attributed to the new possibility of upward
mobility. In medieval culture, you were what you appeared to be - a peasant, a
man of commerce or an aristocrat - and any attempt to assume another status
would have been regarded as rank deception. But in the late 16th century, upward
mobility was beginning to be possible or at least imaginable, making "deception"
a widespread way of life. You might not be a lord or a lofty burgher, but you
could find out how to act like one. Hence the popularity, in 17th-century
England, of books instructing the would-be member of the gentry in how to
comport himself, write an impressive letter and choose a socially advantageous
wife.

Hence, too, the new fascination with the theatre, with its notion of an actor
who is different from his or her roles. This is a notion that takes some getting
used to; in the early years of the theatre, actors who played the part of
villains risked being assaulted by angry playgoers in the streets. Within the
theatre, there is a fascination with plots involving further deceptions:
Shakespeare's Portia pretends to be a doctor of law; Rosalind disguises herself
as a boy; Juliet feigns her own death. Writing a few years after Shakespeare's
death, Burton bemoaned the fact that acting was no longer confined to the
theatre, for "men like stage-players act [a] variety of parts". It was painful,
in his view, "to see a man turn himself into all shapes like a Chameleon ... to
act twenty parts & persons at once for his advantage ... having a several face,
garb, & character, for every one he meets". The inner self that can change
costumes and manners to suit the occasion resembles a skilled craftsperson, too
busy and watchful for the pleasures of easygoing conviviality. As for the outer
self projected by the inner one into the social world: who would want to "lose
oneself" in the communal excitement of carnival when that self has taken so much
effort and care to construct?

So highly is the "inner self" honoured within our own culture that its
acquisition seems to be an unquestionable mark of progress - a requirement, as
Trilling called it, for "the emergence of modern European and American man". It
was, no doubt, this sense of individuality and personal autonomy, "of an
untrammelled freedom to ask questions and explore", as the historian Yi-Fu Tuan
put it, that allowed men such as Martin Luther and Galileo to risk their lives
by defying Catholic doctrine. Which is preferable: a courageous, or even merely
grasping and competitive, individualism, versus a medieval (or, in the case of
non-European cultures, "primitive") personality so deeply mired in community and
ritual that it can barely distinguish a "self"? From the perspective of our own
time, the choice, so stated, is obvious. We have known nothing else.

But there was a price to be paid for the buoyant individualism we associate with
the more upbeat aspects of the early modern period, the Renaissance and
Enlightenment. As Tuan writes, "the obverse" of the new sense of personal
autonomy is "isolation, loneliness, a sense of disengagement, a loss of natural
vitality and of innocent pleasure in the givenness of the world, and a feeling
of burden because reality has no meaning other than what a person chooses to
impart to it". Now if there is one circumstance indisputably involved in the
etiology of depression, it is precisely this sense of isolation. As the
19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim saw it, "Originally society is
everything, the individual nothing ... But gradually things change. As societies
become greater in volume and density, individual differences multiply, and the
moment approaches when the only remaining bond among the members of a single
human group will be that they are all [human]." The flip side of the heroic
autonomy that is said to represent one of the great achievements of the early
modern and modern eras is radical isolation and, with it, depression and
sometimes death.

But the new kind of personality that arose in 16th- and 17th-century Europe was
by no means as autonomous and self-defining as claimed. For far from being
detached from the immediate human environment, the newly self-centered
individual is continually preoccupied with judging the expectations of others
and his or her own success in meeting them: "How am I doing?" this supposedly
autonomous "self" wants to know. "What kind of an impression am I making?"

It is no coincidence that the concept of society emerges at the same time as the
concept of self. What seems most to concern the new and supposedly autonomous
self is the opinion of others, who in aggregate compose "society". Mirrors, for
example, do not show us our "selves", only what others can see, and
autobiographies reveal only what we want those others to know. The crushing
weight of other people's judgments - imagined or real - would help explain the
frequent onset of depression at the time of a perceived or anticipated failure.
In the 19th century, the historian Janet Oppenheim reports, "severely depressed
patients frequently revealed totally unwarranted fears of financial ruin or the
expectation of professional disgrace". This is not autonomy but dependency: the
emerging "self" defines its own worth in terms of the perceived judgments of
others.

If depression was one result of the new individualism, the usual concomitant of
depression - anxiety - was surely another. It takes effort, as well as a great
deal of watchfulness, to second-guess other people's reactions and plot one's
words and gestures accordingly. For the scheming courtier, the striving burgher
and the ambitious lawyer or cleric of early modern Europe, the "self" they
discovered is perhaps best described as an awareness of this ceaseless, internal
effort to adjust one's behaviour to the expectations of others. Play in this
context comes to have a demanding new meaning, unconnected to pleasure, as in
"playing a role". No wonder bourgeois life becomes privatised in the 16th and
17th centuries, with bedrooms and studies to withdraw to, where, for a few hours
a day, the effort can be abandoned, the mask set aside.

But we cannot grasp the full psychological impact of this "mutation in human
nature" in purely secular terms. Four hundred - even 200 - years ago, most
people would have interpreted their feelings of isolation and anxiety through
the medium of religion, translating self as "soul"; the ever-watchful judgmental
gaze of others as "God"; and melancholy as "the gnawing fear of eternal
damnation". Catholicism offered various palliatives to the disturbed and
afflicted, in the form of rituals designed to win divine forgiveness or at least
diminished disapproval; and even Lutheranism, while rejecting most of the
rituals, posited an approachable and ultimately loving God.

Not so with the Calvinist version of Protestantism. Instead of offering relief,
Calvinism provided a metaphysical framework for depression: if you felt
isolated, persecuted and possibly damned, this was because you actually were.

John Bunyan seems to have been a jolly enough fellow in his youth, much given to
dancing and sports in the village green, but with the onset of his religious
crisis these pleasures had to be put aside. Dancing was the hardest to
relinquish - "I was a full year before I could quite leave it" - but he
eventually managed to achieve a fun-free life. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,
carnival is the portal to Hell, just as pleasure in any form - sexual,
gustatory, convivial - is the devil's snare. Nothing speaks more clearly of the
darkening mood, the declining possibilities for joy, than the fact that, while
the medieval peasant created festivities as an escape from work, the Puritan
embraced work as an escape from terror.

We do not have to rely on psychological inference to draw a link between
Calvinism and depression. There is one clear marker for depression - suicide -
and suicide rates have been recorded, with varying degrees of diligence, for
centuries. In his classic study, Durkheim found that Protestants in the 19th
century - not all of whom, of course, were of the Calvinistic persuasion - were
about twice as likely to take their own lives as Catholics. More strikingly, a
recent analysis finds a sudden surge of suicide in the Swiss canton of Zurich,
beginning in the late 16th century, just as that region became a Calvinist
stronghold. Some sort of general breakdown of social mores cannot be invoked as
an explanation, since homicides fell as suicides rose.

So if we are looking for a common source of depression on the one hand, and the
suppression of festivities on the other, it is not hard to find. Urbanisation
and the rise of a competitive, market-based economy favoured a more anxious and
isolated sort of person - potentially both prone to depression and distrustful
of communal pleasures. Calvinism provided a transcendent rationale for this
shift, intensifying the isolation and practically institutionalising depression
as a stage in the quest for salvation. At the level of "deep, underlying
psychological change", both depression and the destruction of festivities could
be described as seemingly inevitable consequences of the broad process known as
modernisation. But could there also be a more straightforward link, a way in
which the death of carnival contributed directly to the epidemic of depression?

It may be that in abandoning their traditional festivities, people lost a
potentially effective cure for it. Burton suggested many cures for melancholy -
study and exercise, for example - but he returned again and again to the same
prescription: "Let them use hunting, sports, plays, jests, merry company ... a
cup of good drink now and then, hear musick, and have such companions with whom
they are especially delighted; merry tales or toys, drinking, singing, dancing,
and whatsoever else may procure mirth." He acknowledged the ongoing attack on
"Dancing, Singing, Masking, Mumming, Stage-plays" by "some severe Gatos,"
referring to the Calvinists, but heartily endorsed the traditional forms of
festivity: "Let them freely feast, sing and dance, have their Puppet-plays,
Hobby-horses, Tabers, Crowds, Bagpipes, &c, play at Ball, and Barley-breaks, and
what sports and recreations they like best." In his ideal world, "none shall be
over-tired, but have their set times of recreations and holidays, to indulge
their humour, feasts and merry meetings ..." His views accorded with treatments
of melancholy already in use in the 16th century. While the disruptively "mad"
were confined and cruelly treated, melancholics were, at least in theory, to be
"refreshed & comforted" and "gladded with instruments of musick".

A little over a century after Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy, another
English writer, Richard Browne, echoed his prescription, backing it up with a
scientific (for the time) view of the workings of the human "machine". Singing
and dancing could cure melancholy, he proposed, by stirring up the "secretions".
And a century later, even Adam Smith, the great prophet of capitalism, was
advocating festivities and art as a means of relieving melancholy.

Burton, Browne and Smith were not the only ones to propose festivity as a cure
for melancholy, and there is reason to believe that whether through guesswork,
nostalgia, or personal experience, they were on to something important. I know
of no attempts in our own time to use festive behaviour as treatment for
depression, if such an experiment is even thinkable in a modern clinical
setting. There is, however, an abundance of evidence that communal pleasures
have served, in a variety of cultures, as a way of alleviating and even curing
depression.

The 19th-century historian JFC Hecker reports an example from 19th-century
Abyssinia, or what is now Ethiopia. An individual, usually a woman, would fall
into a kind of wasting illness, until her relatives agreed to "hire, for a
certain sum of money, a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a
quantity of liquor; then all the young men and women of the place assemble at
the patient's house," where they dance and generally party for days, invariably
effecting a cure. Similarly, in 20th-century Somalia, a married woman afflicted
by what we would call depression would call for a female shaman, who might
diagnose possession by a "sar" spirit. Musicians would be hired, other women
summoned, and the sufferer cured through a long bout of ecstatic dancing with
the all-female group.

We cannot be absolutely sure in any of these cases - from 17th-century England
to 20th-century Somalia - that festivities and danced rituals actually cured the
disease we know as depression. But there are reasons to think that they might
have. First, because such rituals serve to break down the sufferer's sense of
isolation and reconnect him or her with the human community. Second, because
they encourage the experience of self-loss - that is, a release, however
temporary, from the prison of the self, or at least from the anxious business of
evaluating how one stands in the group or in the eyes of an ever-critical God.
Friedrich Nietzsche, as lonely and tormented an individual as the 19th century
produced, understood the therapeutics of ecstasy perhaps better than anyone
else. At a time of almost universal celebration of the "self", he alone dared
speak of the "horror of individual existence", and glimpsed relief in the
ancient Dionysian rituals that he knew of only from reading classics - rituals
in which, he imagined, "each individual becomes not only reconciled to his
fellow but actually at one with him".

The immense tragedy for Europeans, and most acutely for the northern Protestants
among them, was that the same social forces that disposed them to depression
also swept away a traditional cure. They could congratulate themselves for
brilliant achievements in the areas of science, exploration and industry, and
even convince themselves that they had not, like Faust, had to sell their souls
to the devil in exchange for these accomplishments. But with the suppression of
festivities that accompanied modern European "progress", they had done something
perhaps far more damaging: they had completed the demonisation of Dionysus begun
by Christians centuries ago, and thereby rejected one of the most ancient
sources of help - the mind-preserving, life-saving techniques of ecstasy.

· This is an edited extract from Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective
Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich, published by Granta at £16.99. To buy a copy from the
Guardian bookshop for £15.99 with free p&p contact 0870 836 0875 or email
support@.... Barbara Ehrenreich will be speaking with Geoff
Dyer at London's ICA tonight (www.ica.org.uk)


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Car-Free in L.A.
How I Joined Downtown's Elite 11.3% of Transit Users

I joined the ranks of the carless last week. It didn't come easy, though. In
fact, it was downright scary as I reluctantly handed over the pink slip to the
new owner. What would I do if I had a last-minute appointment? Would I want to
hassle with walking or taking the bus after a long day? What if I had errands to
run or needed to meet someone at a restaurant?

The panic quickly dissipated when I took the A DASH the next day to a breakfast
meeting in the Arts District. The trip took all of eight minutes and cost 25
cents, dropping me a block from Café Metropol.

For more of this story, click on or type the URL below:

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/2007/04/02/news/opinion/edit01.txt



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I had a quick response ready, but a technical hitch gave me the
opportunity for further reflection. While the position is interesting
and the applicability to the topic is obvious, there are a number of
issues that arise herefrom.

Anyone familiar with the culture of 12th-century Europe will realise
that `…a medieval (or, in the case of non-European
cultures, "primitive") personality so deeply mired in community and
ritual that it can barely distinguish a "self"…' is just flat wrong.
Nobody will tell me that Bernart de Ventadorn could barely
distinguish a self – and Bernart was not an exceptional phenomenon.
The Middle Ages were full of individual selves. The difference was
that they were in relationships with one another, relationships both
carried by and crucial to the structure of the world in which they
lived. In other words, the relationships of reciprocity played a more
important role than the relationships of common subjection.

There is a tendency either regretfully or triumphantly to identify
ancient cultures with the sort of collectivism that was invented in
the 19th century, along with the `masses'. Most of those cultures
might be better described as `relational'. They don't have `masses'.
What I mean by relational is different from both collectivism and
individualism. The relational mode treasures the individual as the
subject of relation, as that-which-relates.

In terms of the topic at hand, a false ultimatum is too often
presented between the `individualist' suburb with its promise of
personal autonomy, though devoid of any context in which such
autonomy could be meaningful; and `collective' East-bloc high-rise
social housing with its abhorrent dissolution of selves into a
formless continuum which likewise precludes any meaningful
reciprocity. This arises entirely from the failure to distinguish
between the collective and the relational.

If there is an epidemic of depression, could it not rather be because
the world has become more `institutional' since the 17th century? To
those who, like me, hold that coercion is murder and that every
moment lived under duress is a moment subtracted from one's life, the
desire to draw a sword at a man with a clip-board comes quite
naturally.

-Dawie

--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "J.H. Crawford" <mailbox@...>
wrote:
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> I didn't read all of this, but the prescription for
> depression seems to be fun, in public, with lots of
> other people (i.e., community festivals). No cars,
> of course.
>
> One more reason....
>
> Regards,
>
> Joel
>
>
>
> http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2047969,00.html
>
>
> How we learned to stop having fun
>
>
>
> We used to know how to get together and really let our hair down.
Then, in the early 1600s, a mass epidemic of depression broke out -
and we've been living with it ever since. Something went wrong, but
what? Barbara Ehrenreich unpicks the causes of our unhappiness
>
...

Thinking recently about emergency planning, it came to my mind: what
happens to a metro in a power failure? A few thoughts come to mind:

- In Joel's carfree city prototype, what's the maximum number of metro
and metro-freight trains that would be in operation at any given
moment? What would the maximum power consumption be?

- In the event of a municipal utility failure, what happens with the
metro? Are the trains able to glide without power to the next station
to allow a total evacuation without making passengers walk through
tunnels?

- Is an emergency diesel or NG generation system out of the question
for a metro to keep it running? My school has a roughly 80 kW propane
generator to run the elevator, fire pump, emergency lighting, phone
system, and intercom. I assume a metro would need _slightly_ more. *grin*

I'm assuming, though, that Joel's carfree city probably has all the
electric lines underground, reducing storm-related failures. By the
way, where would the metro's maintenance area be? In edge utility
districts?

BTW, for a city the size of Joel's prototype, would a dedicated city
power plant be called for?

quick reply to Matt:

>Thinking recently about emergency planning, it came to my mind: what
>happens to a metro in a power failure? A few thoughts come to mind:
>
>- In Joel's carfree city prototype, what's the maximum number of metro
>and metro-freight trains that would be in operation at any given
>moment? What would the maximum power consumption be?

say about 50 trains, 10 cars = 500 cars
600 kW per car (max), say 150 kW average = 75,000 kW
this assumes the high rates of acceleration proposed in the book

>- In the event of a municipal utility failure, what happens with the
>metro? Are the trains able to glide without power to the next station
>to allow a total evacuation without making passengers walk through
>tunnels?

supercapacitors should probably be installed; these can store
enough power to move trains into stations; they also help with
regeneration

>- Is an emergency diesel or NG generation system out of the question
>for a metro to keep it running? My school has a roughly 80 kW propane
>generator to run the elevator, fire pump, emergency lighting, phone
>system, and intercom. I assume a metro would need _slightly_ more. *grin*

Well, only about 1000 times more ;-)
Actually, to keep the system operating in limp-along,
probably 20,000 kW would do it.
To put this in perspective, the largest diesel engines,
used to power ships, are something like 75,000 kW each.

>I'm assuming, though, that Joel's carfree city probably has all the
>electric lines underground, reducing storm-related failures.

absolutely!

>By the
>way, where would the metro's maintenance area be? In edge utility
>districts?

yup

>BTW, for a city the size of Joel's prototype, would a dedicated city
>power plant be called for?

can't give a definitive answer; it depends on the power
sources and where the energy supply is






-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Matt Hohmeister wrote:

  >In the event of a municipal utility failure, what happens with the
  >metro? Are the trains able to glide without power to the next station
  > to allow a total evacuation without making passengers walk through
tunnels?

In Prague one or two of the metro lines can go under its own power to
the next station, slowly... I assume using some kind of small battery...
for where it is level or a slight incline. For going down you at least
need brakes, plus in either situation door opening would be nice. I am
not sure if there is an advantage to ultracapacitors for a situation
like this.

A system which generates emissions or needs to store liquid for fuel  in
a tunnel is not a good idea.

-T
--

--------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

Korunní 72
CZ-10100 Praha 10
Czech Republic

++420 605 915 970
++420 222 517 832
Skype: toddedelman

edelman@...
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network

Hi All,

Most of you probably know by now that the IPCC was
able to publish a report yesterday that shows we're
in pretty deep trouble with climate change. The report
is, alas, 1500 pages long, and I'm not going to be
able to read it. What's missing from today's reporting
is a dozen maps showing how much sea level will rise
over time, how much warmer it will get in various
places, and how rainfall patterns will change.

If anyone comes across this information, please post
links to it here on the list.

Thanks,

Joel


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Gringo" <Colt.FortyFive@...>
> Date: April 7, 2007 4:02:44 AM PDT
> To: "Carl Covell" <cgc1099@...>
> Subject: CAN YOU TOP THESE?
>
> He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -
> Winston Churchill
> "A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston
> Churchill
> "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with
> great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
> "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to
> the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
> "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big
> words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
> "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
> reading it." - Moses Hadas
> "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
> know." - Abraham Lincoln
> "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -
> Groucho Marx
> "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded
> easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand
> "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
> approved of it." - Mark Twain
> "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -
> Oscar Wilde
> "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play,
> bring a friend... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to
> Winston Churchill
> "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second...if there
> is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.
> "I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you
> here." - Stephen Bishop
> "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright
> "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing
> trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb
> "He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in
> others." - Samuel Johnson
> "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating
> "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
> "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure" -
> Jack E. Leonard
> "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford
> "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of
> human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed
> "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by
> diligent hard work, he overcame them." - James Reston   (about
> Richard Nixon)
> "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker
> "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address
> on it?" - Mark Twain
> "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West
> "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
> - Oscar Wilde
> "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts...for support
> rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
> "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder
>
>
> --
> Gringo, SASS #6739 Life
> First Sergeant SBSS #608
> Second Squadron, Troop G
> Burro Canyon Gunslingers, The Cowboys
> NRA Life, CRPA Life, ILA, RNC, BCCA
> Ontario, California
>
>
>
> “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it
> cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less
> formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the
> traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly
> whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls
> of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he
> speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face
> and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in
> the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works
> secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the
> city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
> A murderer is less to fear.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero
>
>
>
> Read The Patriot It's Right -- It's Free
>
> http://PatriotPost.US/subscribe/
>
>

--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.rickrise.com
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com

Sorry, folks, meant to send those quotes directly to Joel.  Good
stuff, but not development oriented.
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.rickrise.com
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com

--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "J.H. Crawford" <mailbox@...>
wrote:

>  What's missing from today's reporting
> is a dozen maps showing how much sea level will rise
> over time, how much warmer it will get in various
> places, and how rainfall patterns will change.
>
> If anyone comes across this information, please post
> links to it here on the list.


This issue was reported in San Francisco, recently, with a focus on
the local level.  I guess, somehow, none of us remembered to post the
story here.  So, here we go.

       -Doug



============================
CONSEQUENCES OF A RISING BAY

GLOBAL WARMING: New set of maps reveals how melting polar ice could
change shoreline and carry a high price for entire region

New maps show that neighborhoods and roads in many cities near the San
Francisco Bay shoreline would be under water if global warming causes
tides to rise as much as 3 feet in the coming decades, and officials
say regions face key decisions about where people will be able to live
and build.

The maps, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission
prepared for The Chronicle, offer a detailed look at how a changing
shoreline would affect life around the bay.

Parts of Corte Madera, San Rafael, Hayward and Newark and much of the
Silicon Valley shoreline would be under water, including a portion of
Moffett Field, the site of NASA Ames Research Center, where Google
wants to build a 1 million-square-foot campus.

On the edge of the rising waters would be stadium sites proposed for
the 49ers -- in Santa Clara and at the Hunters Point Shipyard in San
Francisco. Fremont's proposed site for the Oakland A's ballpark also
could be vulnerable to flooding in the 21st century, the maps show.

MORE (with maps):

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/18/MNG6SO72DJ1.DTL

The Inited Nations Environment Program has a site in Norway with
numerous downloadable documents and graphics:

http://www.grida.no/

The graphics and maps site (15 pages) is here:

http://maps.grida.no/go/searchFree/q/climate+change

(You need to search around a bit to find relevant graphics and maps...)

Another site, which uses Google maps as its base, illustrates
foreseeable effects of different degrees of sea level rise:

http://flood.firetree.net/

Hope these turn out useful...

Chris Miller

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada



On 7-Apr-07, at 7:59 AM, J.H. Crawford wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
> Most of you probably know by now that the IPCC was
> able to publish a report yesterday that shows we're
> in pretty deep trouble with climate change. The report
> is, alas, 1500 pages long, and I'm not going to be
> able to read it. What's missing from today's reporting
> is a dozen maps showing how much sea level will rise
> over time, how much warmer it will get in various
> places, and how rainfall patterns will change.
>
> If anyone comes across this information, please post
> links to it here on the list.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Joel
>
> ----- ### -----
> J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities
> mailbox@... http://www.carfree.com
>
>
>





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 8-Apr-07, at 5:02 PM, Christopher Miller wrote:

> The Inited Nations Environment Program has a site in Norway with
> numerous downloadable documents and graphics:
(...)

That should of course be United Nations Environment Program...


Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada

Second Life ploy for Paris garden

A Paris residents' association is using the virtual world of Second Life
to get the town hall to press on with plans to redevelop a central area
of the city.

Full story: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6544377.stm>

Second Life website: <http://secondlife.com/>

Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life>

Residents' Assoc. website (in French): <http://www.accomplir.asso.fr/>

--
--------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

Korunní 72
CZ-10100 Praha 10
Czech Republic

++420 605 915 970
++420 222 517 832
Skype: toddedelman

edelman@...
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network

(rickrise@...) saw this on newyorker.com and thought you’d like to see
it.

Long article but a must-read!  (And a must-pass-on....)

Click here:
http://www.newyorker.com/services/referral?messageKey=6a5a2634dcd7fd453a9179059d\
6cd070


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

Though this might be of interest to some.
It was widely syndicated.

Joel



http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/16/559/

Pedal Pushers Making Headway

by Neal Peirce

Are we ready to go bicycling? Could these times of climate change, gas-price
inflation and bulging waistlines be prepping us for new waves of weekend biking
adventures? Maybe even to leave cars parked and cycle to work daily?

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson is one of a growing coterie of city leaders who
believe the moment is ripe. Keynoting this year’s National Bike Summit in
Washington, Abramson described how an early 2005 Louisville gathering of cycling
enthusiasts has changed his city’s focus.

Louisville’s bike paths are being connected into a citywide system. Miles of
highway bike lanes are being added. The city has adopted a “complete streets”
policy requiring the placement of sidewalks, bike lanes and bus stop locations
in any major road improvement. And the city is planning two commuter-friendly
bike stations, with indoor bike parking, rentals and repair facilities.

Revived bicycling is easier to proclaim than achieve in an America that has
experienced a half century-plus of freeway construction and the multibillions in
advertising dollars the auto industry continuously pours into auto
glorification.

But the new bike campaign isn’t against cars per se. It just asks autos and
trucks to yield a share of the road to a transportation means that occupies a
fraction as much pavement, doesn’t pollute, combats obesity, builds overall
physical fitness, and can help congestion by taking a share of autos off the
highways.

Of course, any city can anticipate some angry motorist reactions if new bike
lanes cut back on lanes for regular traffic. Competition for limited roadway
space can be furious.

That’s one reason bicycle advocates such as Brooklyn-based community organizer
Aaron Naparstek are broadcasting a countervailing new message. “Private
passenger cars and SUVs,” insists Naparstek, “are not the most efficient way to
move people through a limited, precious commodity ­ our street space. Bikes and
public transit are.”

The reformers’ prize example is Copenhagen, which has more than 250 miles of
bikeways. Over a third ­ 36 percent ­ of Copenhagen workers commute by bike, 32
percent by mass transit, and only 27 percent by automobile.

Copenhagen goes all-out to promote the cycling: There’s one parking lot for
suburban commuters, for example, in which a bike is part of the deal ­ pay your
parking fee and get a bike to pedal into town.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe has recently announced a program to scatter 1,450
high-tech bicycle stations across the city, 20,600 bikes by this summer. Paris
is promoting bikes as the swiftest way to get around town ­ faster than cars,
taxis and walking.

Personally, I’ve found that true in Washington for years ­ at least anywhere
close in the center city, my bike’s the fastest form of transportation. I
couldn’t agree more with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., founder of the
Congressional Bike Caucus, who said last week of his experience riding his
weathered Trek bicycle around Washington:

“I have saved hundreds of hours of time. I have burned thousands and thousands
of calories instead of gallons of petroleum and, after 10 years, have probably
saved $50,000.”

But there’s a big psychic side to biking too. Louisville’s Abramson describes it
as “the intimate connection you feel to neighborhoods and neighbors as you bike
through a community. You don’t just smell the roses and the forsythia, you smell
the barbecue, see vegetable and flower gardens, hear music. You make eye contact
with folks on front porches.”

All that, plus aging baby boomers favoring bikes over jogging as their knees and
hips give out, may explain the active bike programs now being pushed from
Seattle to Gainesville, Fla., Davis, Calif., to Chattanooga, Tenn. The League of
American Bicyclists (www.bikeleague.org) lists many, with ratings from bronze to
platinum.

Rising bike use will also help with bike safety ­ a major issue everywhere.
Cyclists, even when tempted, need to stop all daredevil maneuvers. And motorists
have to get accustomed to watching for bikes and then sharing the road with
them. Designated bike lanes and signage help. Experience in such cities as
Copenhagen and Portland, Ore., shows safety for bike riders actually rises as
there are more and more riders and the auto world learns to share the roadways
with them.

Neal Peirce’s column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.
His e-mail address is nrp@...

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Our Cities, Ourselves -
Can urban design keep you from getting fat?

By Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate <mailto:surreal@...>

Friday, April 20, 2007

Because he was going to graduate school, retired environmental
researcher John Holtzclaw left San Jose and a job that had him driving
25,000 miles a year. Biking became his primary form of transportation.
After graduation, he settled in an apartment in the Russian
Hill-Chinatown area and gave up his car altogether. During those middle
years when most of us gain girth, Holtzclaw lost 30 pounds bicycling and
walking up the steep hills.

Two years ago, Mary Lanosa moved to Pleasant Hill from San Francisco and
noticed a change for the worse in her well-being and her weight.
Although the length of her commute remained the same in Pleasant Hill as
it was when she lived in San Francisco, in the city she used public
transportation. "In Pleasant Hill you have to drive everywhere, their
public transit is lousy," she told me via e-mail. "I always felt
healthier in the City as I had more opportunities to walk places."

Full story:
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/a/2007/04/20/carollloyd.DT\
L&type=printable>

--
--------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

Korunní 72
CZ-10100 Praha 10
Czech Republic

++420 605 915 970
++420 222 517 832
Skype: toddedelman

edelman@...
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network

I'm not sure if I agree totally. The demand for cycle lanes is a bit vague.
You haven't defined what you mean by "cycle lane" but I assume Lela means a
painted lane on the road reserved for cyclists.



There is a certain paradox about cycle infrastructure. The incidence of
accidents is highest on a segregated bike path, slightly lower on a, on
carriageway bike lane and lowest on the road. This is because of the
conflicts that arise where the bike path/lane crosses roads. Another risk
with bike paths is that it gets the slow bike out of the way of fast cars.
The demand made here is also a bit risky because it suggests that cycling is
dangerous, this can both put off potential cyclists or their parents, or
worse where the city deems it impractical to put a bike lane they might just
close the street for cyclists.



All this said I am a great supporter of bike paths. The single factor that
appears to have the greatest impact on cycle safety is the number of
cyclists. The more cyclists there are the fewer accidents with bikes. One of
the major factors that persuade people to cycle are segregated bike paths
because people feel safer on them. Thus the paradox, bike paths are more
dangerous but they fool the public into feeling safer, thus making them
cycle more, which in turn makes it safer to cycle.



I agree with you proposal but feel that you might justify the need of
cycling infrastructure with claims that it would encourage more cycling. The
health benefits of cycling, reduced pollution, fewer cars less congestion,
better social safety with more people moving around, climate change.



The reasons to promote cycling are many and sound, but demanding bike paths
for safety reasons is a dangerous path to take. This doesn't mean it won't
work, rather that I'm not sure it's the best approach.



I hope this wasn't too confusing.



Ian Fiddies

----- Original Message -----
From: <lela@...>
To: <carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com>; <carfree_network@...>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 9:51 PM
Subject: [carfree_network] Cycling Legislation


> Hello,
>
>
> I am forwarding the initiative: Cycling  Legislation,  for your info.
>
>        http://www.ecopolitics.ca/transport/cyc/cycling_legislation.php
>
>
>
> Cycling groups in other cities, especially in the North America where
> auto-mentality prevails, could propose legislation in order to make
> cycling infrastructure mandatory.  The principles based on  Rights are
> the same.
>
>
> Lela  Gary
>
>
> [carfree_network] list guidelines and unsubscribe information are found at
> http://www.worldcarfree.net/listservs/. Send messages for the entire list
> to carfree_network@.... Send replies to individuals off-list.
>

Subject: [carfree_network] Istanbul conference update and welcome


Hello everyone,

On behalf of World Carfree Network and our hosts, we are happy to invite you to
join us in Istanbul for this year's Towards Carfree Cities VII conference, which
will be held from August 27-31.

We also wanted to update you on how things are going with the conference
preparation. All the relevant information is at
<http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/>www.worldcarfree.net/conference/ or
will be added there in the next couple of weeks. And of course we're awaiting
your creative ideas to make the conference as fruitful as possible.

Here's our report:

VENUE

Everything is arranged for using the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University for all of
our meetings, activities and for many of our meals. More info on the venue is
already on the
<http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/>www.worldcarfree.net/conference/
website. We will be using the auditorium, the planning studio, the waterfront
outdoor space and the cafeteria and café. Everything is arranged for the
technical side: projectors, screens, etc.

FORMULA 1 RACE

The Formula 1 Grand Prix car race will be in Istanbul on the weekend of August
25-26. Participants can come early to take part in an action against the race,
to be organised by the Young Greens.

The race will also have the effect of increasing hotel prices for this time, but
only for four- and five-star hotels.

ACCOMMODATION

Participants need to book their own accommodation, as in past years. The web
page
<http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/accom.php>www.worldcarfree.net/conferenc\
e/accom.php will be updated in a week or two with various options. People should
book as soon as possible. Our suggested budget option is Sultan Hostel
(<http://www.sultanhostel.com/>www.sultanhostel.com), which has 110 beds. The
three-star suggestion is Sebnem Hotel
(<http://www.sebnemhotel.net>www.sebnemhotel.net), with 30 beds. If the Sebnem
becomes full, they will help you book in the adjacent hotels of similar
price/quality. All of these options are in the Old City (Sultanahmet), a few
tram stops from the university.

THEME / KEYNOTES

As mentioned before and on the conference website, the theme is "Building a
Livable Future in a Changing Climate," and this includes political, cultural,
spatial and environmental change.

In our preparation meetings this past week, we've decided that we'd like to
invite three keynote speakers as follows:

1)       a representative of the City of Paris (Denis Baupin?), to highlight the
the city's various ambitious and innovative projects to reduce car dependence,
improve accessibility for all, and increase livability for residents and
visitors.

2)       an initiator or coordinator of one of the new carfree developments that
have been built in Europe, or someone else who can provide a good overview of 
existing carfree communities.

3)       an urban planner who is developing a transport master plan for several
cities in Turkey to enhance livability, who can also provide a good overview of
the changing political climate among decision-makers

If anyone has any more suggestions for keynote speakers, please send them to
<mailto:istanbul@...>istanbul@....

DEBATES AND STRATEGY SESSIONS

So far we have several ideas for debates:

1)       complete streets (see
<http://www.completestreets.org/>www.completestreets.org for more info) and
shared space (see "shared space" entry in Wikipedia) concepts vs.
pedestrianisation

2)       mobility vs. proximity (to what extent should we prioritise movement
vs. living in urban space allocation)

3)       car culture vs. public space culture (for example, if drivers get free
parking space, shouldn't carfree people also get space to do something?)

4)        carbon offsetting (is it really possible to cancel out our climate
impact by paying someone to cut emissions elsewhere?)

5)       car-based vs. carfree lifestyle (health and environmental impacts)

For strategy sessions we have so far four ideas:

1)       organising carfree days

2)       realising carfree developments and supporting policies

3)       combating car advertising (and increasing carfree advertising)

4)       improving the urban living environment (deep aesthetics, etc.)

Again, if anyone would like to lead or participate in these sessions, or if you
have other ideas, please contact
<mailto:istanbul@...>istanbul@....

PROGRAMME (IN GENERAL)

This week we've finished the general framework for the programme, and will be
uploading it to the website
(<http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/programme.php>www.worldcarfree.net/conf\
erence/programme.php) within two weeks.

The deadline for sending in your proposals is April 30, but please send them
even if you must miss the deadline. See
<http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/proposals.php>www.worldcarfree.net/confe\
rence/proposals.php for details.

OUTREACH/PROMOTION

We will make some promotional materials (leaflet, PDF, digital announcement) for
the conference. We'd be happy if you could reprint or distribute this to your
organisations' members or other contacts. The more that people hear about the
conference, the better. You can also simply use the info that's already on the
website, or refer people there.

TRAVEL

If you would like to travel by train with other conference participants, please
use the carfree_network list to state your preferred travel dates/locations to
connect with others travelling the same route.

Looking forward to seeing you all in August,
Randy and Kevser, in Istanbul


--
Randall Ghent
Membership & Conference Coordinator
WORLD CARFREE NETWORK
Kratka 26, 100 00 Prague 10
Czech Republic
tel/fax: +(420) 274 810 849
skype: wcn-icc / randallghent
<mailto:rghent@...>rghent@...


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Last week Centre for an Urban Future in NYC released a report entitled
"Staten Island 2020",
<http://www.nycfuture.org/images_pdfs/pdfs/StatenIsland2020.pdf>, about
Staten Island's economic future. The study shows that New York's
fastest-growing borough has a lot going for it today, but faces serious
economic and infrastructure challenges--from an exodus of young people
to stubbornly high vacancy rates in the borough's office buildings.

Press coverage of the report includes:

"Staten Island Considers New Plans to Keep Its Youth from Leaving", by
Patrick McGeehan, /The New York Times/, April 25, 2007
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/nyregion/25staten.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref\
=slogin>


////"Ambitious Vision for Island's Future", by Tom Wrobleski, /Staten
Island Advance/, April 24, 2007
<http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1177416004240690.xml&co\
ll=1>

"Staten Island Facing Economic Issues: Report" by David Jones, /Crain's
New York Business/, April 24, 2007
<http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070424/FREE/7042401\
0/1097>

--
--------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

Korunní 72
CZ-10100 Praha 10
Czech Republic

++420 605 915 970
++420 222 517 832
Skype: toddedelman

edelman@...
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network

George Monbiot, author of _Heat_, said this yesterday
in the Guardian:


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/01/896/

Published on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 by The Guardian/UK
The Rich World’s Policy on Greenhouse Gas Now Seems Clear: Millions Will Die

by George Monbiot

Rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You
won’t find this statement in the draft of the new report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the Guardian last
week. But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your
eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using
figures they know to be false.

The British government, the European Union and the United Nations all claim to
be trying to prevent “dangerous” climate change. Any level of climate change is
dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word
means: two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is dangerous
because of its direct impacts on people and places (it could, for example,
trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the collapse of
the Amazon rainforest) and because it is likely to stimulate further warming, as
it encourages the world’s natural systems to start releasing greenhouse gases.

The aim of preventing more than 2C of warming has been adopted overtly by the UN
and the European Union, and implicitly by the British, German and Swedish
governments. All of them say they are hoping to confine the concentrations of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a level that would prevent such a rise.
And all of them know that they have set the wrong targets, based on outdated
science. Fearful of the political implications, they have failed to adjust to
the levels the new research demands.

This isn’t easy to follow, but please bear with me, as you cannot understand the
world’s most important issue without grappling with some numbers. The average
global temperature is affected by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. This concentration is usually expressed as “carbon dioxide
equivalent”. It is not an exact science - you cannot say that a certain
concentration of gases will lead to a precise increase in temperature - but
scientists discuss the relationship in terms of probability. A paper published
last year by the climatologist Malte Meinshausen suggests that if greenhouse
gases reach a concentration of 550 parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent,
there is a 63-99% chance (with an average value of 82%) that global warming will
exceed two degrees. At 475 parts per million (ppm) the average likelihood is
64%. Only if concentrations are stabilised at 400 parts or below is there a low
chance (an average of 28%) that temperatures will rise by more than two degrees.

The IPCC’s draft report contains similar figures. A concentration of 510ppm
gives us a 33% chance of preventing more than two degrees of warming. A
concentration of 590ppm gives us a 10% chance. You begin to understand the scale
of the challenge when you discover that the current level of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere (using the IPCC’s formula) is 459ppm. We have already exceeded
the safe level. To give ourselves a high chance of preventing dangerous climate
change, we will need a programme so drastic that greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere end up below the current concentrations. The sooner this happens, the
greater the chance of preventing two degrees of warming.

But no government has set itself this task. The European Union and the Swedish
government have established the world’s most stringent target. It is 550ppm,
which gives us a near certainty of an extra 2C. The British government makes use
of a clever conjuring trick. Its target is also “550 parts per million”, but 550
parts of carbon dioxide alone. When you include the other greenhouse gases, this
translates into 666ppm, carbon dioxide equivalent (a fitting figure). According
to last autumn’s Stern report on the economics of climate change, at 650ppm
there is a 60-95% chance of 3C of warming. The government’s target, in other
words, commits us to a very dangerous level of climate change.

The British government has been aware that it has set the wrong target for at
least four years. In 2003 the environment department found that “with an
atmospheric CO2 stabilisation concentration of 550ppm, temperatures are expected
to rise by between 2C and 5C”. In March last year it admitted that “a limit
closer to 450ppm or even lower, might be more appropriate to meet a 2C
stabilisation limit”. Yet the target has not changed. Last October I challenged
the environment secretary, David Miliband, over this issue on Channel 4 News. He
responded as if he had never come across it before.

The European Union is also aware that it is using the wrong figures. In 2005 it
found that “to have a reasonable chance to limit global warming to no more than
2C, stabilisation of concentrations well below 550ppm CO2 equivalent may be
needed”. But its target hasn’t changed either.

Embarrassingly for the government, and for leftwingers like me, the only large
political entity that seems able to confront this is the British Conservative
party. In a paper published a fortnight ago, it called for an atmospheric
stabilisation target of 400-450ppm carbon dioxide equivalent. Will this become
policy? Does Cameron have the guts to do what his advisers say he should?

In my book Heat, I estimate that to avoid two degrees of warming we require a
global emissions cut of 60% per capita between now and 2030. This translates
into an 87% cut in the United Kingdom. This is a much stiffer target than the
British government’s - which requires a 60% cut in the UK’s emissions by 2050.
But my figure now appears to have been an underestimate. A recent paper in the
journal Climatic Change emphasises that the sensitivity of global temperatures
to greenhouse gas concentrations remains uncertain. But if we use the average
figure, to obtain a 50% chance of preventing more than 2C of warming requires a
global cut of 80% by 2050.

This is a cut in total emissions, not in emissions per head. If the population
were to rise from 6 billion to 9 billion between now and then, we would need an
87% cut in global emissions per person. If carbon emissions are to be
distributed equally, the greater cut must be made by the biggest polluters: rich
nations like us. The UK’s emissions per capita would need to fall by 91%.

But our governments appear quietly to have abandoned their aim of preventing
dangerous climate change. If so, they condemn millions to death. What the IPCC
report shows is that we have to stop treating climate change as an urgent issue.
We have to start treating it as an international emergency.

We must open immediate negotiations with China, which threatens to become the
world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by next November, partly because it
manufactures many of the products we use. We must work out how much it would
cost to decarbonise its growing economy, and help to pay. We need a major
diplomatic offensive - far more pressing than it has been so far - to persuade
the United States to do what it did in 1941, and turn the economy around on a
dime. But above all we need to show that we remain serious about fighting
climate change, by setting the targets the science demands.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Three news articles today in the mainstream press:

1.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/832943.html


Making strides for HRM
Danish urban-planning expert touts benefits of car-free streets
<http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/http://oascentral.thechronicleherald.ca/Real\
Media/ads/click_lx.ads/thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/front.html/568509875/Middle/H\
alfaxHer/000_Herald_House_instory/Herald_House_fishing_300x250.html/343865313832\
38383436333963346530>By MICHAEL LIGHTSTONE Staff Reporter

ADVERTISEMENT

Cities like ours can become more car-free and pedestrian-friendly with careful
planning and political will, a public meeting in Halifax heard Wednesday.

And city hall officials could look to Copenhagen as an example of an urban port
that has evolved from a car-clogged municipality into an attractive people
place.

Danish consultant Lars Gemzoe said "a change of urban culture" in Copenhagen
resulted in more and more sites being reserved for pedestrians and cyclists. He
said his nation’s capital, home to about 500,000 in its central district alone,
opened its first car-free road in 1962.

Mr. Gemzoe said other streets have since been made off-limits to vehicles, and
the result is a sociable downtown that’s a welcoming world for walkers.

He said walking "is a simple, cheap and low-noise activity" that doesn’t pollute
the atmosphere and helps improve pedestrians’ fitness levels. From an urban
design point of view, Mr. Gemzoe said, pedestrian-only streets downtown can
provide a portal to improved human relationships.

"We get to know each other better in society" when people are out of our cars
and actually meeting each other, said the visiting expert, a lecturer of urban
design at an architecture school in Copenhagen. Mr. Gemzoe was speaking to about
45 people who attended his talk at a school in Clayton Park.

Walking is North America’s most popular physical activity. But some cities are
much more pedestrian-friendly than others; our municipality’s
urban/suburban/rural melange can make improvements challenging for municipal
planners.

According to an HRM website, 41 per cent of residents who live in the urban core
and work in the capital district walk to work. The capital district includes
downtown Halifax, downtown Dartmouth, Gottingen Street, Spring Garden Road and
the Quinpool Road area.

Encouraging active living in metro and less reliance on automobiles are elements
of the municipality’s 25-year growth plan. Critics say that aside from making
the city more walkable, HRM lags behind other Canadian centres in providing
proper routes for cyclists and others on wheels.

Mr. Gemzoe said cycling in Copenhagen has doubled since the 1970s.

(
<http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/%22mailto\
:mlightstone@herald.ca%22>mlightstone@...)

’(Walking) is a simple, cheap and low-noise activity.’



2.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/02/national/main2752742.shtml

Car-Free Zones On Rise In U.S.

More Cities Banning Cars From Parks, Making Pedestrians And Bicyclists Kings Of
The Road

SAN FRANCISCO, May 2, 2007  (originally from yesterday's Christian Science
Monitor)

Every other Sunday, streets in Quito, Ecuador, are closed to automobile traffic
so people can ride safely. More and more U.S. cities are adopting this practice.
(CSM)

Quote

"Cities across America are increasingly declaring that parks are for people, not
cars, ... and closing roads within parks is one result of that."

Every Saturday, starting May 26 through Sept. 30, bicyclists, joggers, and
pedestrians will have free rein on almost a mile of John F. Kennedy Drive, the
main drag through Golden Gate Park. The usual denizens of the road ­ autos ­
will be banned, detoured elsewhere.

Vehicles are already prohibited in parts of the park on Sundays, and the
decision to "go carless" on Saturdays as well concludes a heated seven-year
debate. In the end, arguments that such road closures promote family activities,
more active lifestyles, and tighter-knit communities carried the day.

The auto's demotion at Golden Gate Park follows dozens of similar moves in at
least 20 American cities in the past three years. It's a trend that is gaining
ground rapidly in the US, say urban planners.

New York is proposing to shut down perimeter roads of Central Park and
Brooklyn's Prospect Park all summer long.
Atlanta plans to transform 53 acres of blighted, unused land into new
bike-friendly green space.
Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and El Paso, Texas, are planning events to
promote car-free days in public parks, most in the hope that the idea will
become permanent or extend for months.

"Cities across America are increasingly declaring that parks are for people, not
cars, ... and closing roads within parks is one result of that," says Ben Welle
with The Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence in Washington.

Resistance can be fierce at first, he and others say, because of worries about
traffic congestion, parking problems, and loss of visitors for businesses and
museums. But studies are showing that traffic problems can be minimized, shops
and museums get more visitors, and residents begin to cherish their
where-the-action-is location.

Not everyone is convinced, saying the jury is still out on how no-car zones
affect neighborhood vitality. In San Francisco, for instance, the de Young
Museum has said its delivery schedule must be adjusted because of the new road
closure, and it is concerned that patrons with physical disabilities may not be
able to get to the museum as readily.

The model city for road closure is Bogotá, Colombia, which in 1983 embarked on a
program called ciclovia (bike path), in which designated streets were closed to
cars every Sunday but open for jogging, biking, dancing, playing ball, walking
pets, strolling with babies ­ anything but driving. One-and-a-half million
people now turn out each week for ciclovia. Other cities in Latin America
followed suit, closing parts of parks or whole urban districts to cars ­ some
intermittently, some permanently. A result: revitalized neighborhoods and an
influx of people.

Smaller U.S. cities, from Davenport, Iowa, to Huntington Beach, Calif., are also
starting to create car-free zones, according to Mr. Welle's studies. Beginning
this month, El Paso will detour cars from seven roads every Sunday from 7 to 11
a.m. so that cyclists, joggers, and pedestrians can use them instead.

"City leaders were faced with a challenge: to get a poor city of overweight,
sedentary people moving when there weren't any parks or [bicycle] lanes," says
Robin Stallings of the Texas Bicycle Coalition. A national magazine declared the
city one of the four fattest in the U.S., he says, "and that really got
everyone's attention."

Two years of planning and $100,000 in donations made the program possible.

El Paso is the first ciclovia city in Texas ­ and it needs it more than most,
says Beto O'Rourke, the city councilman who championed the idea. It has just 25
percent of the park space of the average U.S. city, a smaller tax base, and few
spaces for pedestrians or bicyclists, he says. "This solves a lot of problems at
once."

The trend reflects cities' response to residents who, after streaming back to
city centers, want more pedestrian amenities.

"The great thing about ciclovia is that cities can do it very inexpensively. All
the infrastructure is already there; there is no added capital cost," says Gil
Penalosa, former parks and recreation director for Bogotá who helped expand its
network of closed roads from 8 miles in 1997 to 70 miles today.

In some ciclovia cities, such as Guadalahara, Mexico, fears that autoless
streets would cause economic hardship have dissolved. Some merchants actually
had to return to their stores on Sundays because the thousands of visitors
wanted everything from food and drink to curios.

"The economic boost to Guadalahara has been tremendous," says Rob Sadowsky, a
Chicago bike activist who recently visited the city for a ciclovia symposium.
Mr. Sadowsky is organizing an August event in the Windy City that, if
successful, would extend next year from May to October.

In the U.S., say observers, the clamoring for car-free park space is
intensifying because of two other trends: global warming and obesity rates.

"Climate change and the obesity crisis have [rejuvenated] the movement for
car-free space," says Paul White of Transportation Alternatives, which works to
reclaim roads from autos. As of last year, he notes, more of Earth's inhabitants
live in cities than in rural areas. "Now we have to figure out what urban
habitat will sustain ourselves ... it's all about reducing car use."

© 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.


3.

and only peripherally:

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070502/OPINION/70502032\
6

You can change the channel, but not much changes

By John M. Crisp

May 02, 2007

Last week was National TV-Turnoff Week, an event promoted by TV-Free America
every year since April 1995, when 1 million people decided to abandon
TV-watching for a full week. The goal of TV-Free America is the elimination or
drastic curtailment of the use of TV and other electronic devices in order to
encourage reconnection with the virtues of pre-TV life.

It's hard to imagine a more quixotic quest than asking us to give up television
for any length of time. The only one I can think of that comes close is the
mission of World Carfree Network, the anti-car crusaders. Not only are cars and
TVs our culture's most prominent inventions, but in many ways they invented our
culture. It's hard to imagine it without them.

............etc.



-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

See:

http://www.asla.org/land/dirt/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=4305FF61-1422-1874\
-817C3BBF0C655C14


But Where Will the Baron Live? Florida Development to Try New Medievalism

April 30, 2007 10:48 AM
Related Categories:
<http://www.asla.org/land/dirt/blog/index.cfm/Residential>Residential

This new 600-acre development in Florida's Panhandle might just put New Urbanism
on its head,
<http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/25/Business/Call_it_green_medieva.shtml>reports
the St. Petersburg Times. "Sky" is not based on bucolic, early 20th-century
communities, but rather on an attempt to recreate the hamlets of the Middle
Ages, with clusters of homes surrounded by fields and garden plots. The project,
largely self-financed, is scheduled to break ground in 2008 and be completed by
2018.

  From the article:
[Developer Bruce] White's medieval prototype development will come with such
modern luxuries as tennis courts, a spa, coffee shops, and the latest in
high-tech energy efficiency.

The development has also scored a $1.8 million grant from the state of Florida
to use renewable energy technologies on-site. The Dirt has yet to confirm
whether the moat will be a graywater or harvested rainwater system.

Check the
<http://www.dpz.com/project.aspx?type=3&Project_Number=604&Project_Name=Sky>proj\
ect's website for more details and images.


and:


http://www.dpz.com/project.aspx?type=3&Project_Number=604&Project_Name=Sky


Sky presents a new model for growth to Calhoun County by advocating compact
development and the preservation of open space in this predominently rural area.
Rather than consuming former agricultural land with sprawl, Sky clusters its
development into villages and hamlets, offering compact and walkable communities
within a greater natural and agricultural environment.

Three villages are located along the perimeter of the site, linked by
picturesque roads. These villages offer intensifi ed development in limited
areas, with commercial centers located within walking distance for residents.
Smaller, courtyard style homes are provided within the village centers, while
larger lots border the roads, providing expansive views over the fi elds. These
estate, or hacienda, lots can be partially utilized for agricultural purposes or
equestrian activities. Many of these lots are intended to have land preservation
covenants, as well as incentive programs encouraging homeowners to build with
green, energy-friendly technologies.

The site is dotted with cypress wetlands, pine forests and farm land, about half
of which will be preserved. Creeks, lakes and extensive trail systems for hikers
and equestrians offer residents and visitors access to various natural
landscapes. Additionally, each village will feature a signifi cant amount of
public outdoor space. The community’s primary center will be a treed square and
plaza opening towards the northeast of the site, and offering views across the
fi elds to a new, man-made lake. A lodge and spa are tucked away beyond this
lake, affording visitors solace and relaxation.

The principles regarding Sky’s environmental and sustainable building policies
will be imbedded in the town’s urban and architectural codes. The plan, along
with these codes, will enable Sky to become a model environmental development,
exhibiting sustainable growth patterns on both the regional and community
scales.

project tearsheet: 142 Kb PDF file

[The PDF does not seem to be available]



-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com

Climate change is a fashionable topic here in the States, as well, but
I see almost no one addressing the elephant in the garage, namely,
America's overwhelming dependence on the automobile, supposedly
responsible for 1/3 of all U.S. greenhouse emissions.

The "helpful hints" given in popular newspapers and magazines include
replacing conventional light bulbs with fluorescent ones or paying
one's utility company extra to subsidize the use of wind power, and
some even refer indirectly to the problem of automobile exhaust by
saying, "Keep your tires properly inflated to increase gas mileage" or
"Combine errands into one trip" or "Replace one car trip a week with
transit or cycling," or "Buy a Prius" or even, misguidedly, "Buy a
vehicle that runs on ethanol."

However, I have never seen a popular article that says, "Get rid of
your car" or, for people trapped in car-dependent communities, as I
currently am, "Have no more than one car per household and use it as
little as possible." Another suggestion that I never see is, "Urge your
local government to adopt pedestrian-friendly and transit-friendly
construction, zoning, and retrofitting standards, and to ban all
sprawl-engendering development."

Meanwhile, suburban sprawl continues unchecked, with only a few "New
Urbanist" designs scattered among the strip malls, and even some of
these New Urban areas are essentially car-dependent.

This is especially sad because another hot topic in the popular press
is the problem of elderly people who keep driving after their eyesight
or mental acuity dims. Having faced this situation within my own
extended family, I can understand how not driving reduces an older
adult to the helplessness of a child, but writers on this topic
concentrate not on expanding alternatives to driving but on
psychological strategies for getting older people to surrender their
driving privileges.

I feel as if I'm in a country that is walking over a cliff with its
eyes open.

In transit,
Karen Sandness

At the risk of stating the obvious, two observations:

1. With reference to the bottom aerial perspective on the
development's website, that's a lot of roadway, isn't it?

2. Where's the ground-floor light-industrial?

Why is the residential function seen as essentially unproductive? Why
this emphasis on leisure? Who would want to live in a perpetual
holiday resort? A hotel is just a comfortable prison: it doesn't
represent freedom.

There's no better model than the medieval agrarian village - for a
working agrarian community. Are these buyers really going to farm?
Will they even be allowed to?

There is one thing lacking in the legacy of the Arts and Crafts
movement, namely a creative appreciation of medieval urban forms. It
belatedly needs to be redressed: but this doesn't quite do it.

-Dawie Coetzee



--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "J.H. Crawford" <mailbox@...>
wrote:
>
>
> See:
>
> http://www.asla.org/land/dirt/blog/index.cfm?
mode=entry&entry=4305FF61-1422-1874-817C3BBF0C655C14
>
>
> But Where Will the Baron Live? Florida Development to Try New
Medievalism
>
...
> -----                           ###                            -----
> J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
> mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com
>