It took a decade for me to get to the point where I felt able to divorce my
car having driven cars since I was 17 in 1959.

http://democracystreet.blogspot.com/search?q=amicable+divorce+carfree

It should have been easier for an academic with all the facilities for
hot-desking on campus and teleworking from home. I think I had to get the
car out of my head before I could get it out of my hands. Birmingham UK is
reasonably well covered by public transport and has a big network of canal
towpaths. The other big condition is that while I am carfree and glad of it
- our household is not. My wife still has a car which I borrow ­ rarely ­ to
carry heavy stuff. I also use it with her driving if we go out to visit.
Linda does the main shopping. The kind of changes needed to get my family to
copy me and that Joel has been writing about require transformation of
settlement patterns, reform of rapid transit and urban re-design - on an
immense scale. Those things will take much longer and require far greater
commitment than I needed just to divorce my car. I think that ­ barring some
crisis like 9/11 which had many NYs getting on bicycles for a while ­ change
has to come psychologically and through the slow grasp of the way a carfree
city might be. Asking people to take on the panoply of great theories about
the character of cities including Joel¹s work that look to reduce or
eliminate autodependency is a tall order. It raises the question of whether
you get a kid a bicycle for Christmas (or Eid or Diwali or ...) or that
great book by Jane Jacobs. Gosh I wish there was a children¹s version of
that with chapters on cycle maintenance and DVDs of city cycling and walking
­ then you could give them the multimedia-book and the bike.

Happy New Year 2009.

Simon
http://democracystreet.blogspot.com
http://www.inlogov.bham.ac.uk/staff/baddeleys.htm

On 29/12/08 07:33, "Matthew Thyer" <matt_thyer@...> wrote:

> Ron,
>
> I just caught up on some reading and went through the "Manfred" posts.  I'd
> suggest, not that I'm defending anyone here, that there is a certain level of
> frustration that comes with living a car-free or car-light lifestyle and its
> possible that Manfred may be experiencing this.  I've found it to be a
> progression of little things that add up over time that make it increasingly
> difficult to stay optimistic in the face of this growing monster we're all
> kind of stuck with.
>
> I'm guessing here, but Manfred's tone appears to me to be one of frustration.
> Where's the help from government?  Why must cars stink up the air in cities?
> When will it stop raining in Seattle and Portland?  Choosing to take your
> bike, walk, or ride the bus or train is a personal decision that no one will
> help you with.  There are fewer support organization around today for people
> trying to make the "right" decision than there is aid for those who simply
> don't care.  You and I and everyone else who's ever tried to live in a reduced
> carbon footprint know that this is the "high road" which is never easier to
> traverse.
>
> That said the high road comes with its own rewards not available to those who
> avoid this path.  You can only realize these rewards by continuing to climb.



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

On Dec 30, 2008, at 3:01 AM, Simon Baddeley wrote:

> The other big condition is that while I am carfree and glad of it
> - our household is not. My wife still has a car which I borrow
> rarely  to
> carry heavy stuff. I also use it with her driving if we go out to
> visit.
> Linda does the main shopping.


Good points about civic layout, but we can't really wait for the
powers-that-be to change the world for us.  We have to change our way
of living first, and create a demand that they will eventually fill.
Government is generally reponsive (if you're lucky) rather than
proactive--and then, of course, you have to fight against the big
noise of corporate lobbying that usually overwhelms the voice of
popular desire.

I did all the shopping for a family of three for years on a standard
bike.  New and relatively cheap bicycle tehcnologies--particularly
longtails--are becoming available that are specifically designed to
replace cars for families.  I am myself considering buying a German-
made Yuba Mundo (well below US$1K) for hauling my business inventory
around, which i now do rather inconveniently by bus or standard bike,
or on foot.  This bike can carry up to 400 pounds/180kg. I mention it
because it's the cheapest readymade solution (originally designed to
provide cheap goods transport to poor African communities).  All
these longtails were inspired by the Xtracycle attachment which
converts a standard bike to a cargo carrier.

These have been taking off in Los Angeles, of all places--Ground Zero
of Carmageddon--and the burgeoning use of bikes here has made bicycle
accommodation a  normal part of civic planning discourse. This
"softens the target" for eventual carfree districts.  We are making
our own history here, in effect.  Guerilla signs pop up denoting bike
crossings at difficult intersections; they are eventually taken down,
but then discussion has actively begun on converting certain streets
to "bike boulevards," in which car travel is severely restricted
while bicycles have through travel rights.

At the corner of Heliotrope and Melrose, sings indicate a "bicycle
district."  They are on commercial rather than public property--
several bicycle-oriented businesses are there, including the Bicycle
Kitchen--and so they remain.  And now, there are suddenly 16 bike
parking racks in  a 30 meter stretch--installed by the city!

Small things, but most beginnings are.

Yuba cargo bikes: http://www.yubaride.com/index.html
Xtracycle: http://www.xtracycle.com/

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







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

A New York Times article on "Passive houses" whose heating is based on
energy efficiency rather than extensive energy use for heating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?em

=========================================================

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about
the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein
District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling
through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution
in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no
snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in
fact, no furnace.
In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for
emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on
the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive
house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they
need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr.
Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck
into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open
to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy
of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy
efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better
insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into
alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000
outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle.
Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the
architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that
barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a
passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat
from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to
build than conventional houses.

Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed,
because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an
ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes
side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90
percent efficiency.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal
is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang
Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is
not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and
putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy
input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the
vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries
or Scandinavia.

The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a
local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The
courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the
components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in
Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is
promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has
proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is
considering passive-house barracks.

“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with
requests,” Mr. Hasper said.

Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11
years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United
States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area
architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the
standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,”
Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”

Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the
Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it
did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is
still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-
house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,”
he said.

Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound
suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test”
showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive
houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north
— and all can be opened.
Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from
conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from
its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of
air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA
filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement
isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.

Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are
swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the
elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the
ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there
is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler,
containing the heat exchanger.

Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a
switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or
up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the
windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel
they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience
like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I
grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I
knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who
built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now
designs no other kinds of buildings.

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest
and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of
attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems
needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available
in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the
United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price
differential.

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States
are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings
tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding
windows are hard to seal.

Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four
apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to
be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The
Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to
conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure
they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United
States.

Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the
building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about
site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley
in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall.
Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer
climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep
cool air in and warm air out.

And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact
shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to
insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a
comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people
who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another
design.

“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well,
that’s a different discussion.”


=========================================================

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada

A series of posts on the CoolTowns blog this week point to some very
interesting work on how a set or proscriptive (as opposed to
prescriptive) rules from early mediterranean times lead to emergent
urban structure typical of many mediterranean towns:


http://www.cooltownstudios.com/2008/12/29/cities-today-use-prescriptive-codes-bu\
t-what-came-before-that

http://www.cooltownstudios.com/

The blog, from a Montreal based, recently graduated architecture
student, that summarises the work describing these codes:

http://mathieuhelie.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/decoding-paradise-the-emergent-form\
-of-mediterranean-towns/

(Images are of course stripped away by the Yahoo! Groups software, so
following the link gives you the best read.)
=========================================================

Decoding paradise - the emergent form of Mediterranean townsDecember
21, 2008 · 3 Comments

   ----------


Serifos in Greece

Until very recent times, a study entitled Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise
of Design and Construction Rules From Sixth-Century Palestine might
have been categorized somewhere in-between ancient history and
archeology of architecture, if not relegated to the dusty shelves of
legal scholarship. Although it deals with one of the most sought-after
secrets of architecture, how to build the charming Mediterranean towns
of Greece, Spain, North Africa, the Near East and many other places,
this is not immediately obvious from the content of the treatise. The
reason for this is that the treatise does not so much describe the
form of the town as the process for building it, and the process turns
out to be emergent. Unless the reader makes the link from process to
form, the rules described will make no more sense than the rules for a
cellular automaton out of context.

It is tragic that enormous amounts of resources have been spent
attempting to recreate the Mediterranean town with no clue as to the
underlying source of its complexity. Montreal itself has the world
famous Habitat 67, a confusing pastiche of the memories that architect
Moshe Safdie brought back from his land of birth, which he had in
common with Julian of Ascalon. Habitat 67 was intended to be a low-
cost solution to housing, but it never was taken seriously as a model
for urban habitat, and its current untrendiness spares it from being
labeled fake complexity. That an attempt to emulate the architecture
of some of the poorest people of previous centuries would result in an
expensive failure testifies to the inadequacy of modern production
processes, but also of the wealth inherent in those simple traditional
production processes. The beauty resulting from large aggregations of
simple buildings has turned many towns into tourist destinations.
There is value in process.

The complexity demonstrated by the constructions of pre-modern
civilizations may be a direct consequence of their material poverty.
Most people will claim that the loss of building quality is a result
of culture, and so we must change our own culture through education.
That is not a complete answer. Cultures are stored in information
technologies and media. The modern era coincides with the invention of
printing, making it possible for the first time to reproduce
information in large quantities at low costs. As information
technologies have progressed and become more affordable, building
processes have become increasingly dependent on large amounts of
descriptive information, with blueprints describing in every minute
detail how to compose a building. And now that CAD software can
describe and store nearly limitless information, whole new forms of
buildings have become possible.

All of this progress has only enabled builders to become lazier with
information. Pre-modern builders, limited to oral communication and
their brains to hold information, had to employ very sophisticated
means of information compression to communicate and simply remember
their cultures. This lead them to rely on simple processes the likes
of which are behind the complexity in fractal geometry and cellular
automata to build their environments - very short sequences of
information that can be utilized to generate fully complex forms.
Christopher Alexander even used as an example, in The Nature of Order,
the production of a boat that had been coded into a song that the
builders recited while creating the boat, adding a mnemotechnical
aspect to the storage of cultural information that was essential to
pre-modern survival.

Without knowing how traditional cultures were stored, we had no idea
how to inspire ourselves from them. Modern and post-modern architects
attempted in vain to imitate traditional building using their own,
lazy information technologies, and succeeded only in building pastiche
of complexity. The breakthroughs in complexity theory of the past
decades finally gave us the opportunity to decode the mysteries of
historic building cultures by showing us what kind of information to
search for. What was right in front our noses suddenly becomes deeply
meaningful.

It is to his great credit that Besim S. Hakim went looking
specifically for the source of the emergent forms of Mediterranean
towns in treatises of building laws. From his study of the treatise of
Julian of Ascalon, but also of those of Muslim scholars around the
Mediterranean, he was able to identify the underlying process that
generates the complex morphology all towns of the region have in
common, and that so many have sought to imitate. It is no exaggeration
to call this pioneering work in complexity.

The space of Hakim’s search began in the Islamic world, with the
treatise of Ibn al-Rami from Tunis in circa 1350. Tracing the origins
of the practices described in the treatise, references to treatises
written in Egypt, Arabia, Tunisia and Andalusia in previous centuries
were researched until the treatise of Julian of Ascalon was uncovered.
Written in Palestine to describe the local building customs in order
to provide the Byzantine empire with an improved legal system, this
particular treatise’s value is its longevity. After propagating
throughout Greek civilization as part of a general book of laws (the
Hexabiblos), its authority was invoked in decisions dating as recently
as the 19th century. Hakim infers the origins of these shared
practices, and the shared morphology of regions as far apart
culturally, linguistically and geographically, as Andalusia, Greece
and Palestine, to customs from ancient Babylonian civilization that
had spread to the Eastern Roman Empire.

The goal shared by these treatises is a definition of urbanism as
relevant today as it was in Babylon:

The goal is to deal with change in the built environment by ensuring
that minimum damage occurs to preexisting structures and their owners,
through stipulating fairness in the distribution of rights and
responsibilities among various parties, particularly those who are
proximate to each other. This ultimately will ensure the equitable
equilibrium of the built environment during the process of change and
growth. (Hakim, Mediterranean urban and building codes: origins,
content, impact, and lessons, p. 24)

Here we see what the underlying error of Habitat 67 was. It was
designed as a single static building imitating a process that made a
living tissue out of many individual acts of simple building. The
codes of the Mediterranean treat the town as a living, whole structure
in movement that must be preserved while it achieves equilibrium with
a changing environment and society.

Perhaps the most relevant conclusion of this research is the
identification of proscriptive and prescriptive rules for building.

Proscription is an imposed restraint synonymous with prohibition as in
‘Thou shalt not’, for example, you are free to design and manipulate
your property provided you do not create damage on adjacent
properties. Prescription is laying down of authoritative directions as
in ‘Thou shalt’, for example, you shall setback from your front
boundary by (x) meters, and from your side boundaries by (y) meters
regardless of site conditions. Byzantine codes in many instances
included specific numeric prescriptions, unlike their Islamic
counterparts that tended not to include them. (Hakim, Mediterranean
urban and building codes: origins, content, impact, and lessons, p. 26)

A prescription would be a rule that defines in detail what to do in a
given situation. A proscription is a template for defining
prescriptive rules, a pattern for a rule. Muslim scholars provided
mainly proscriptions, but Julian of Ascalon’s treatise was highly
prescriptive. Julian was describing in details the local building
codes with the idea that they would be used to devise proscriptive
rules for the empire. By accident these prescriptive rules became law
and remained in force for centuries until their inability to deal with
society or physical conditions radically different from sixth century
Palestine made them obsolete. Although it means the codes failed to
deal with changing circumstances, this gives us the chance to bridge
the gap between the physical structure of built towns and the rules
that generate them.

The concept of proscriptive rules also helps explain why so many
different cultures with specific structural typologies can generate
such similar morphology. Hakim uses as an example the problem of
views. The Greeks were preoccupied with views of the sea, and their
prescriptive rules obliged the preservation of view corridors in new
constructions. Muslims, on the other hand, were preoccupied with the
preservation of privacy and the prevention of intrusive views from one
property to another. This would have very different results
structurally, however those two prescriptive rules are based on the
same underlying proscription. Local customs and culture could
therefore be translated into prescriptive rules using the
proscriptions inscribed in building treatises and the emergent
morphology of those proscriptions would be symmetric from one culture
to the next, while being fully adapted to local conditions.

Another significant fact that strikes out from these treatises is the
importance of relationships between neighbors. The Julian of Ascalon
treatise describes how to literally embed houses into each other,
ultimately making them one continuous, somewhat random building
created through iterated steps. But most importantly by proscribing
rules as relevant to a neighborhood, Mediterranean urbanism avoids the
problem of the absolutist, dare I say “Cartesian” rules of modern
planning that are relative to the precisely subdivided lot the
building is on. Hakim shows the wastefulness of latter rules in a
comparison of the old town of Muharraq in Bahrain with a new
subdivision from modern Muharraq

The town on the left was generated using proscriptions based on
neighbors, while the subdivision on the right used absolute rules
planned with the subdivision. Notice that the configurations on the
right waste much of the space in order to achieve a strictly
Cartesian, grid-like morphology that no doubt looks orderly to the
planners.

The last item of significance, and perhaps the most revolutionary, is
how the proscriptions extracted by Hakim are similar in nature to the
rules that Stephen Wolfram described to generate emergent complexity
with cellular automata. He himself follows a proscription/prescription
system, where the proscription is for example the 2 color, one-
dimension elementary cellular automaton that made him famous, for
which there exist 256 different prescriptive rules of neighborhood,
some of which grow in time to make two-dimensional chaotic fractals.
Some urban complexity researchers such as Michael Batty have been
playing with cellular automata trying to reproduce urban form, but
their efforts have taken them on the wrong track. The codes of
historic towns behave in the same manner as a cellular automaton. This
should be the focus of their research.

Whatever the potential for research, the proscriptions discovered by
Besim S. Hakim are still relevant today and can be used to create the
prescriptions that we need to implement an emergent urbanism relevant
to the problems of today, that is to say the creation of a sustainable
city and living urban tissue out of the vast urban fabric of suburban
sprawl. Hakim has so far focused his work on the regeneration of
historic neighborhoods by restoring the generative codes that produced
them, but there is a vast potential to expand his work to non-historic
neighborhoods that are in dire need of new life.

Addendum

Four regions, four cultures, one shared process generating a symmetric
morphology


   ----------


Tunisia


   ----------


Andalusia


   ----------


Greece


   ----------


Palestine

Reference

Besim S. Hakim - Generative processes for revitalising historic towns
or heritage districts

Besim S. Hakim - Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and
Design Rules from Sixth Century Palestine

Besim S. Hakim - Mediterranean urban and building codes: origins,
content, impact, and lessons

and don’t forget to look at Besim S. Hakim’s website.

=========================================================

The URL links from Mathieu Hélie's blog:

Besim S. Hakim - Generative processes for revitalising historic towns
or heritage districts:

http://intbau.org/essay19.htm

Besim S. Hakim - Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and
Design Rules from Sixth Century Palestine:

http://www.charrettecenter.net/charrettecenter.asp?a=spf&pfk=7&gk=220&plk=430

Besim S. Hakim - Mediterranean urban and building codes: origins,
content, impact, and lessons:

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/udi/journal/v13/n1/full/udi20084a.html

and don’t forget to look at Besim S. Hakim’s website:

http://www.charrettecenter.net/charrettecenter.asp?a=spf&pfk=7&gk=220


=========================================================

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada



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

Cars no longer coveted by young
New generation of consumers views autos as exhorbitant waste, not
status symbol

By YURI KAGEYAMA
The Associated Press

To get around the city, Yutaka Makino hops on his skateboard or takes
the trains. Does he dream of the day when he owns his own car? Not a
chance.

Like many Japanese of his generation, the 28-year-old musician and
part-time maintenance worker says owning a car is more trouble than
it's worth, especially in a congested city where monthly parking runs
as much as ¥30,000 ($330), and gas costs about ¥100 a liter (about
$3.50 a gallon).

That kind of thinking — which has been dubbed by automakers as "kuruma
banare," or "demotorization" — represents a U-turn from the thinking
of earlier generations of Japanese who viewed cars as status symbols.
The trend is worrying auto executives who fear the nation's love
affair with automobiles is coming to an end.

"Young people's interest is shifting from cars to communication tools
like personal computers, mobile phones and services," said Yoichiro
Ichimaru, who oversees domestic sales at Toyota.

More at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090104f3.html

I've often wondered why anyone in urban Japan would want to own a car,
and I guess large numbers of young Japanese have asked themselves the
same question.

In transit,
Karen Sandness

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "L.A. Downtown News" <realpeople@...>
> Date: January 7, 2009 3:27:17 PM PST
> To: rickrise@...
> Subject: NEWS UPDATE: Design Standards Go to Planning Commission
> Reply-To: realpeople@...
>
>
> Downtown Design Standards Go to Planning Commission
> Panel Expected to Approve Rules That Would Make Area More
> Pedestrian-Friendly
>
> by Anna Scott
> Staff Writer
> The City Planning Commission on Thursday is expected to approve a
> proposal that could bring wide, tree-lined sidewalks, landscaped
> courtyards, more streetlights and other pedestrian-friendly
> features to Downtown.
>     The Commission will vote Jan. 8 on whether to recommend that
> the city adopt new development requirements aimed at creating a
> walkable Downtown landscape. The plan is twofold: The Urban Design
> Standards and Guidelines address sidewalks and buildings,
> establishing standards for sustainable design, setbacks,
> architectural detail and other elements, while the Downtown Street
> Standards would update the area’s street classifications to better
> balance car, pedestrian and bicycle traffic and other uses.
>     The guidelines would apply to new developments in an
> approximately 2.8-square-mile area roughly bounded by the 101, 10
> and 110 freeways to the north, south and west, and the Fashion
> District to the east.
>      “This is the first time the city will be considering a true
> urban design project that joins the clear importance of our
> sidewalks to the way development is built,” said Emily Gabel-Luddy,
> who heads the Planning Department’s Urban Design Studio, which
> spearheaded the effort. “Downtown is the first neighborhood, or
> collection of neighborhoods, where this is being implemented.”
>     Key to the plan are stipulations that would require most
> Downtown developers to widen sidewalks instead of streets near
> their projects and accommodate for landscaping.
>     Ninth District Councilwoman Jan Perry pointed to the Portland-
> based South Group’s trio of eco-friendly high-rises in South Park,
> surrounded by double rows of trees, planters and benches, as an
> example of the sort of development Downtown would see more of under
> the new rules.
>     “The sidewalks can’t just be cement slabs,” said Perry. “They
> have to have landscaping and lighting so people aren’t afraid to
> come out at night, much like the South Group has done.”
>     Another piece of the plan is a set of rules governing
> buildings’ street-level space. Focused on promoting pedestrian
> traffic and avoiding blank walls and visible parking, the standards
> demand, among other things, that ground-floor space facing the
> sidewalk be at least 75% devoted to retail, office or other active
> uses. The standards also dictate that buildings’ primary entrances
> open onto the sidewalk or a sidewalk-accessible public space.
>     Many of the standards, said Gabel-Luddy, are based on existing
> requirements in other big cities, including New York, Vancouver and
> Seattle. “All three of these cities have a very well-established
> relationship between street design and building design,” she said.
> “Our street standards for years have been divorced from building
> design.”
>     The design and street standards, a joint effort between the
> Planning Department, the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Bureau
> of Engineering and the Department of Transportation, have been in
> the works for nearly two years. They have received widespread
> support from city officials and stakeholder groups, and no major
> opposition is expected to surface at Thursday’s meeting.
>     If the Planning Commission votes in favor of adopting the plan,
> it will continue on to the City Council. Gabel-Luddy said she
> expects the plan to be formally adopted in March.
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

An interesting carfree attitude in the news below, especially the following:

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is
the farthest thing from their mind...Americans can do without cars and
such, but they cannot do without sex."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4165049/US-porn-industry\
-seeks-multi-billion-dollar-bailout.html

An article in the Boston Globe about researchers' studies that show
negative effects of urban vs natural environments on cognitive
functioning. The general assumption is that urban environment = the
current car-centric urban milieu we all know and love (so little -- I
wonder why...). Parts of the article seem to point to the advantages
of a carfree urban environment though I think, from what I am able to
glean from the article, that it would actually be useful for research
to be done (or cited if it already has been done) that compares the
two extremes with car-free urban environments including fully
pedestrianised areas in large cities such as Copenhagen's Strøget
shopping street, and the kind of thing Joel has been arguing we should
move toward, namely more human-scaled environments such as those found
in Venice and many other smaller European and other Old World cities.

Since the article is a popularising overview of research, it glosses
over important questions about the precise factors (implied in the
paragraph above) that contribute to strengthening or weakening of
cognitive abilities: human density per se as opposed to crowding on
sidewalks combined with roads crowded with roaring and speeding cars;
oversized versus human-scaled buildings and street spaces; degree of
planting/greenery versus quality; absence of overall natural stimuli
versus natural stimuli for all the senses (and so on...). I wonder
what thoughts people here might have for an experimental paradigm that
would produce more solid and interesting results?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_y\
our_brain/


=========================================================

How the city hurts your brain
...And what you can do about it

By Jonah Lehrer
January 2, 2009
Email|Print|Single Page|Yahoo! Buzz|ShareThisText size – +
THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-
century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss
chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris,
where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis,
we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce;
even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.

And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated
Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an
estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for
playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and
overwhelming place.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain,
and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment,
they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a
few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold
things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's
long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why
Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually
dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at
the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that
measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And
we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can
exceed those limitations."

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is
surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for
instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can
see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing
are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy
courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain
performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the
urban roil.

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For
the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities.
For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the
African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift. Instead of
inhabiting wide-open spaces, we're crowded into concrete jungles,
surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers. In recent
years, it's become clear that such unnatural surroundings have
important implications for our mental and physical health, and can
powerfully alter how we think.

This research is also leading some scientists to dabble in urban
design, as they look for ways to make the metropolis less damaging to
the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as
planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a
greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side
effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can
be a big help.


And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated
Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an
estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for
playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and
overwhelming place.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain,
and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment,
they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a
few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold
things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's
long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why
Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually
dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at
the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that
measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And
we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can
exceed those limitations."

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is
surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for
instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can
see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing
are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy
courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain
performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the
urban roil.

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For
the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities.
For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the
African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift. Instead of
inhabiting wide-open spaces, we're crowded into concrete jungles,
surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers. In recent
years, it's become clear that such unnatural surroundings have
important implications for our mental and physical health, and can
powerfully alter how we think.

This research is also leading some scientists to dabble in urban
design, as they look for ways to make the metropolis less damaging to
the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as
planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a
greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side
effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can
be a big help.

Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a
busy thoroughfare like Newbury Street. There are the crowded sidewalks
full of distracted pedestrians who have to be avoided; the hazardous
crosswalks that require the brain to monitor the flow of traffic. (The
brain is a wary machine, always looking out for potential threats.)
There's the confusing urban grid, which forces people to think
continually about where they're going and how to get there.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is
that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city
is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our
attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a
flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger
on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the
mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is
like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention
consumes much of its processing power.

Natural settings, in contrast, don't require the same amount of
cognitive effort. This idea is known as attention restoration theory,
or ART, and it was first developed by Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist
at the University of Michigan. While it's long been known that human
attention is a scarce resource -- focusing in the morning makes it
harder to focus in the afternoon -- Kaplan hypothesized that immersion
in nature might have a restorative effect.

Imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in Concord. The woods surrounding
the pond are filled with pitch pine and hickory trees. Chickadees and
red-tailed hawks nest in the branches; squirrels and rabbits skirmish
in the berry bushes. Natural settings are full of objects that
automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative
emotional response -- unlike, say, a backfiring car. The mental
machinery that directs attention can relax deeply, replenishing itself.

"It's not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of
Manhattan," says Berman. "They needed to put a park there."

In a study published last month, Berman outfitted undergraduates at
the University of Michigan with GPS receivers. Some of the students
took a stroll in an arboretum, while others walked around the busy
streets of downtown Ann Arbor.

The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests.
People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored
significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which
involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just
glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable
impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature.

"We see the picture of the busy street, and we automatically imagine
what it's like to be there," says Berman. "And that's when your
ability to pay attention starts to suffer."

This also helps explain why, according to several studies, children
with attention-deficit disorder have fewer symptoms in natural
settings. When surrounded by trees and animals, they are less likely
to have behavioral problems and are better able to focus on a
particular task.

Studies have found that even a relatively paltry patch of nature can
confer benefits. In the late 1990s, Frances Kuo, director of the
Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois,
began interviewing female residents in the Robert Taylor Homes, a
massive housing project on the South Side of Chicago.

Kuo and her colleagues compared women randomly assigned to various
apartments. Some had a view of nothing but concrete sprawl, the
blacktop of parking lots and basketball courts. Others looked out on
grassy courtyards filled with trees and flowerbeds. Kuo then measured
the two groups on a variety of tasks, from basic tests of attention to
surveys that looked at how the women were handling major life
challenges. She found that living in an apartment with a view of
greenery led to significant improvements in every category.

"We've constructed a world that's always drawing down from the same
mental account," Kuo says. "And then we're surprised when [after
spending time in the city] we can't focus at home."

But the density of city life doesn't just make it harder to focus: It
also interferes with our self-control. In that stroll down Newbury,
the brain is also assaulted with temptations -- caramel lattes, iPods,
discounted cashmere sweaters, and high-heeled shoes. Resisting these
temptations requires us to flex the prefrontal cortex, a nub of brain
just behind the eyes. Unfortunately, this is the same brain area
that's responsible for directed attention, which means that it's
already been depleted from walking around the city. As a result, it's
less able to exert self-control, which means we're more likely to
splurge on the latte and those shoes we don't really need. While the
human brain possesses incredible computational powers, it's
surprisingly easy to short-circuit: all it takes is a hectic city
street.

"I think cities reveal how fragile some of our 'higher' mental
functions actually are," Kuo says. "We take these talents for granted,
but they really need to be protected."

Related research has demonstrated that increased "cognitive load" --
like the mental demands of being in a city -- makes people more likely
to choose chocolate cake instead of fruit salad, or indulge in a
unhealthy snack. This is the one-two punch of city life: It subverts
our ability to resist temptation even as it surrounds us with it, from
fast-food outlets to fancy clothing stores. The end result is too many
calories and too much credit card debt.

City life can also lead to loss of emotional control. Kuo and her
colleagues found less domestic violence in the apartments with views
of greenery. These data build on earlier work that demonstrated how
aspects of the urban environment, such as crowding and unpredictable
noise, can also lead to increased levels of aggression. A tired brain,
run down by the stimuli of city life, is more likely to lose its temper.

Long before scientists warned about depleted prefrontal cortices,
philosophers and landscape architects were warning about the effects
of the undiluted city, and looking for ways to integrate nature into
modern life. Ralph Waldo Emerson advised people to "adopt the pace of
nature," while the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted sought to
create vibrant urban parks, such as Central Park in New York and the
Emerald Necklace in Boston, that allowed the masses to escape the
maelstrom of urban life.

Although Olmsted took pains to design parks with a variety of habitats
and botanical settings, most urban greenspaces are much less diverse.
This is due in part to the "savannah hypothesis," which argues that
people prefer wide-open landscapes that resemble the African landscape
in which we evolved. Over time, this hypothesis has led to a
proliferation of expansive civic lawns, punctuated by a few trees and
playing fields.

However, these savannah-like parks are actually the least beneficial
for the brain. In a recent paper, Richard Fuller, an ecologist at the
University of Queensland, demonstrated that the psychological benefits
of green space are closely linked to the diversity of its plant life.
When a city park has a larger variety of trees, subjects that spend
time in the park score higher on various measures of psychological
well-being, at least when compared with less biodiverse parks.

"We worry a lot about the effects of urbanization on other species,"
Fuller says. "But we're also affected by it. That's why it's so
important to invest in the spaces that provide us with some relief."

When a park is properly designed, it can improve the function of the
brain within minutes. As the Berman study demonstrates, just looking
at a natural scene can lead to higher scores on tests of attention and
memory. While people have searched high and low for ways to improve
cognitive performance, from doping themselves with Red Bull to
redesigning the layout of offices, it appears that few of these
treatments are as effective as simply taking a walk in a natural place.

Given the myriad mental problems that are exacerbated by city life,
from an inability to pay attention to a lack of self-control, the
question remains: Why do cities continue to grow? And why, even in the
electronic age, do they endure as wellsprings of intellectual life?

Recent research by scientists at the Santa Fe Institute used a set of
complex mathematical algorithms to demonstrate that the very same
urban features that trigger lapses in attention and memory -- the
crowded streets, the crushing density of people -- also correlate with
measures of innovation, as strangers interact with one another in
unpredictable ways. It is the "concentration of social interactions"
that is largely responsible for urban creativity, according to the
scientists. The density of 18th-century London may have triggered
outbreaks of disease, but it also led to intellectual breakthroughs,
just as the density of Cambridge -- one of the densest cities in
America -- contributes to its success as a creative center. One
corollary of this research is that less dense urban areas, like
Phoenix, may, over time, generate less innovation.

The key, then, is to find ways to mitigate the psychological damage of
the metropolis while still preserving its unique benefits. Kuo, for
instance, describes herself as "not a nature person," but has learned
to seek out more natural settings: The woods have become a kind of
medicine. As a result, she's better able to cope with the stresses of
city life, while still enjoying its many pleasures and benefits.
Because there always comes a time, as Lou Reed once sang, when a
person wants to say: "I'm sick of the trees/take me to the city."

Jonah Lehrer is the author of the new book "How We Decide." His first
book was "Proust Was a Neuroscientist." He is a regular contributor to
Ideas.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

=========================================================

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada



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

For those interested in getting hold of the original study referred to
in my earlier email: the author, Marc Berman of the University of
Michigan, can be reached via contact information at this URL:

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/directory/profiles/?id=bermanm

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada

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

SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT | January 13, 2009
A Bicycle Evangelist With the Wind Now at His Back
By CORNELIA DEAN
Earl Blumenauer, the founder and proprietor of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus,
advocates cycling as a remedy for everything from climate change to obesity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/earth/13profile.html?emc=eta1




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Frm the New York Times on line:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/earth/13profile.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26emcQ3\
Deta1&OP=11885c48Q2FQ3DqXQ5CQ3D_GvQ234GGiQ22Q3DQ22Q27Q276Q3DQ27IQ3DI-Q3DQ23v5XQ5\
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(The content is no longer directly available and requires a log-in.
First page of two is reproduced below.)

=========================================================


Gulf Oil States Seeking a Lead in Clean Energy

Daryl Visscher for The New York Times
Recycled rebar is being used for a concrete foundation at Masdar, a
model city being built in Abu Dhabi that is designed to generate no
carbon emissions.
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By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 12, 2009
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — With one of the highest per capita
carbon footprints in the world, these oil-rich emirates would seem an
unlikely place for a green revolution.

Enlarge This Image

Daryl Visscher for The New York Times
Different types of solar panels are being tested at Masdar. The city,
designed by Norman Foster, will include a research park.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (27) »
Gasoline sells for 45 cents a gallon. There is little public
transportation and no recycling. Residents drive between air-
conditioned apartments and air-conditioned malls, which are lighted
24/7.

Still, the region’s leaders know energy and money, having built their
wealth on oil. They understand that oil is a finite resource,
vulnerable to competition from new energy sources.

So even as President-elect Barack Obama talks about promoting green
jobs as America’s route out of recession, gulf states, including the
emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are making a concerted push to
become the Silicon Valley of alternative energy.

They are aggressively pouring billions of dollars made in the oil
fields into new green technologies. They are establishing billion-
dollar clean-technology investment funds. And they are putting
millions of dollars behind research projects at universities from
California to Boston to London, and setting up green research parks at
home.

“Abu Dhabi is an oil-exporting country, and we want to become an
energy-exporting country, and to do that we need to excel at the newer
forms of energy,” said Khaled Awad, a director of Masdar, a futuristic
zero-carbon city and a research park that has an affiliation with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that is rising from the desert
on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

These are long-term investments in an alternative energy future that
neither falling oil prices nor the global downturn seems likely to
reverse. Even as the local real estate market is foundering, leaders
in politics, business and research from across the globe will flock to
this distant kingdom for three days starting Monday for the second
World Future Energy Summit, which just one year after its inception
here has become something of a Davos gathering on renewable energy.

This year’s guest list includes a former British prime minister, Tony
Blair, and the European Unionenergy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, as
well as the oil and gas ministers of Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab
Emirates. In attendance will also be executives representing hundreds
of companies, large and small, from BP and Credit Suisse to dozens of
start-up companies from Europe and the United States.

“Truth is that locally money is tight as everywhere, and the property
market is certainly taking a correction downwards,” said Richard
Hease, whose Dubai-based company, Turret Middle East, organized the
conference. “But on the renewable energy front, it is business as
usual.”

This new investment aims to maintain the gulf’s dominant position as a
global energy supplier, gaining patents from the new technologies and
promoting green manufacturing. But if the United States and the
European Union have set energy independence from the gulf states as a
goal of new renewable energy efforts, they may find they are arriving
late at the party.

“The leadership in these breakthrough technologies is a title the U.S.
can lose easily,” said Peter Barker-Homek, chief executive of Taqa,
Abu Dhabi’s national energy company. “Here we have low taxes, a young
population, accessibility to the world, abundant natural resources and
willingness to invest in the seed capital.”

The vision of a renewable future in the gulf is rooted not so much in
a fuzzy green sentiment — though that is starting to take hold — as in
analysis of the region’s economic future and the high-end lifestyles
of its citizens.

“You see what the gulf states have achieved in terms of modern
infrastructure and beautiful architecture, but this has come at a very
high environmental price,” said Mr. Awad of Masdar, standing in a
field of 40 types of solar panels that the project’s engineers are
testing, and using to power offices.

“We know we can’t continue with this carbon footprint,” he said. “We
have to change. This is why Abu Dhabi must develop new models — for
the planet, of course, but also so as not to jeopardize Abu Dhabi.”

The world is now consuming 80 million barrels of oil a day, and that
could continue to rise steeply over the coming decades if population
and consumption trends continue. That could mean having to add six
Saudi Arabias worth of oil output just to keep up, according to Mr.
Barker-Homek, at a time when scientists are warning that carbon levels
need to be cut significantly to avoid potentially disastrous global
warming.

To hedge their positions, then, an increasingly sophisticated
generation of largely Western-educated leaders in the Middle East are
seizing on green business opportunities, by seeding research in
faraway nations.

The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven emirates
that make up the United Arab Emirates, announced last January that he
would invest $15 billion in renewable energy. That is the same amount
that President-elect Obama has proposed investing — in the entire
United States — “to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean
energy future.”

Masdar, the model city that will generate no carbon emissions, is tied
to the crown prince’s ambitions. Designed by Norman Foster, the
British architect, it will include a satellite campus of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a research park with
laboratories affiliated with Imperial College London and other
institutions.

In Saudi Arabia, the new state-owned King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology, or Kaust, gave a Stanford scientist $25
million last year to start a research center on how to make the cost
of solar power competitive with that of coal. Kaust, now in its first
grant cycle, also gave $8 million to a Berkeley researcher developing
green concrete.

And it has other agreements as well, with Caltech, Cambridge, Cornell,
Imperial, La Sapienza, Oxford and Utrecht, to name just a few.

In November, the Qatari government signed an agreement with Britain’s
visiting prime minister, Gordon Brown, to invest £150 million, or more
than $220 million, in a British low-carbon technology fund, dwarfing
the fund’s investments from home.




=========================================================

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada



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

Hi Chris
I have just started using Sketchup and am a big fan of the software
and Joel's vision of a car free city. My view is that means NO cars.
Pleople walk, wheel, cycle or travel by train.
I would be very interested in starting up a group/community to bring
his vision to 'life' in 3D using Sketchup.
Anyone else interested or knowing of an already similar project then
please post.

cheers
Spencer

--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "jackskellin9ton"
<jackskellin9ton@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Just wondering if anyone else has tried modelling towns and cities in 3d
> with Google Sketchup, a (fairly) easy to learn 3d modelling program you
> can download for free at
>
> http://sketchup.google.com/ <http://sketchup.google.com/>
>
> You could import, say, one of Joel's district designs and rescale it.
> Then you just draw around the edges of the blocks,  use the offset tool
> to draw the inside of the blocks automatically, and then use the
> push/pull tool to make them 3d with 1 click.  And once you've finished,
> you can go for a 'walk' around.
>
> I've just finished modelling my eco-town with it.  You can see a pic of
> the whole town at
>
> http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/doubleplus/cloverleaf_city/ecotown/index.htm
>
<http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/doubleplus/cloverleaf_city/ecotown/index.htm\
> >
>
> or zoomed in pics at
>
>
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/doubleplus/cloverleaf_city/ecotown/density.ht\
> m
>
<http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/doubleplus/cloverleaf_city/ecotown/density.h\
> tm>
>
>
>
> Chris B
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Spencer said:


>I have just started using Sketchup and am a big fan of the software
>and Joel's vision of a car free city. My view is that means NO cars.
>Pleople walk, wheel, cycle or travel by train.
>I would be very interested in starting up a group/community to bring
>his vision to 'life' in 3D using Sketchup.
>Anyone else interested or knowing of an already similar project then
>please post.

I've been thinking about this project for more than ten
years. Part of the work was done recently by Procedural,
a Swiss outfit that released software to construct detailed
virtual cities. (The film industry is very interested.)
The stuff costs $7000. There's a free 30-day trial. I'm
waiting until the decks are clear, so that I can spend
every minute of 30 days with it.

I want to automate the process, with a page or two of inputs
that allow you to specify a whole range of parameters along
with the range of random variation for each parameter. Each
time you press the button you get a different city, even with
the same inputs.

Outputs would include 2D and later 3D graphics plus a thorough
statistical summary of the result, including resource inputs
required to build and operate the city.

http://www.procedural.com/

http://www.nlynch.com/pages/47/procedural_city_builder/

http://www.3daet.com/pages/805/l-system_city/


So, yeah, consider me interested.

Best,

Joel





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

Hi again,

Add to links on this:

http://www.gamesitb.com/SurveyProcedural.pdf

Best,

Joel


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

Very intersting!
The ability to use procedural methods to generate streets and
buildings would certainly save a lot of time.
I'll download the software this evening.
$7000 certainly puts it out of the reach of a community to purchase.
They have some pretty good press, however it looks like a new product
and there's nothing like a good showcase of what your product can do
along with some great publicity which could definitely be generated.
What are the thoughts on sending them an email asking for an unlimited
copy for free? They'll want assurances that we aren't going to spread
it around the internet or benefit from it commercially, purely for it
to showcase a vision of post car cities.
If you don't ask, you don't get :-)

cheers
Spencer


--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "J.H. Crawford" <mailbox@...>
wrote:
>
>
> Spencer said:
>
>
> >I have just started using Sketchup and am a big fan of the software
> >and Joel's vision of a car free city. My view is that means NO cars.
> >Pleople walk, wheel, cycle or travel by train.
> >I would be very interested in starting up a group/community to bring
> >his vision to 'life' in 3D using Sketchup.
> >Anyone else interested or knowing of an already similar project then
> >please post.
>
> I've been thinking about this project for more than ten
> years. Part of the work was done recently by Procedural,
> a Swiss outfit that released software to construct detailed
> virtual cities. (The film industry is very interested.)
> The stuff costs $7000. There's a free 30-day trial. I'm
> waiting until the decks are clear, so that I can spend
> every minute of 30 days with it.
>
> I want to automate the process, with a page or two of inputs
> that allow you to specify a whole range of parameters along
> with the range of random variation for each parameter. Each
> time you press the button you get a different city, even with
> the same inputs.
>
> Outputs would include 2D and later 3D graphics plus a thorough
> statistical summary of the result, including resource inputs
> required to build and operate the city.
>
> http://www.procedural.com/
>
> http://www.nlynch.com/pages/47/procedural_city_builder/
>
> http://www.3daet.com/pages/805/l-system_city/
>
>
> So, yeah, consider me interested.
>
> Best,
>
> Joel
>
>
>
>
>
> -----                           ###                            -----
> J.H. Crawford                                         Carfree Cities
> mailbox@...                           http://www.carfree.com
>

I was amazed that its possible to build homes that need no heating
plant in a place as cold as Darmstadt. So I looked into a bit further.
I found two things that might be of interest to the group:

- Perhaps already well known by others here that, in addition to being
known for fully passive housing, Darmstadt is also known for care free
development. From
http://www.sustainabilityproductions.com/maison_passive.htm -
"Darmstadt, in Germany, created an experimental neighbourhood called
K6 in which car traffic is prohibited.  Residents benefit from a lot
of public green spaces.  In this neighbourhood, there are already 72
passive homes, and some 50 others are currently being built.  The
other dwellings in the neighbourhood are low-energy homes."

- Austria (where I am right now) is also a leader in the passive house
movement. More on that in the previous link as well as a report here -
http://www.folkecenter.net/default.asp?id=33339 - on a passive house
conference that had sold out attendance of 1,000. And a very
informative report on existing multi-family housing here -
http://www.irbdirekt.de/daten/iconda/CIB7853.pdf.

So at least in Germany and Austria the passive house movement has some
momentum. Seems that the car free movement could benefit from this in
several ways:

- looking at how/why the passive house movement is gaining actual
investment and progressing in contrast to the long lingering
dreaming/hoping of the car free movement.

- recognizing that people interested in passive will have substantial
overlap with those interested in car free. Perhaps the movements could
be somehow joined?

- recognizing that multi-family housing favors both lower energy use
and car free transportation, bringing multi-family into the car free
idea as a primary facilitator.

As I've observed here before, Vienna is largely multi-family with
typical buildings being 3-4 stories. This density (not to much, not
too little) helps to support the charming, effective, and heavily used
tram system. Now if they could just do more to stop the increasing
penetration of the auto....

__________Ron



--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Miller
<christophermiller@...> wrote:
>
> A New York Times article on "Passive houses" whose heating is based on
> energy efficiency rather than extensive energy use for heating.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?em
>
-----------deletage-------------

Fascinating backup to what I'm sure many of us feel. That Car Free is
about much more than reducing CO2 or traffic deaths. Its about the
very enjoyment of life and our sanity.

On your question as to whether the high-density shopping area
(Copenhagen's Strøget in your example) or the smaller scale
city/village (Venice in Joel's example) is the most probable Car Free
locale/modality, the probably answer would be both. That each modality
fits some people and some places. Do we need to choose?

And then the question, can a low density sprawl (Silicon Valley for
instance) - function Car Free? Or is that just impossible?

BTW, Vienna has a wonderful Car Free downtown. On NYE 800,000 people
celebrated there. Really great! On the other hand, I would like to see
us expand our vision and hopefulness for Car Free beyond these
shopping areas. Sure one step at a time. But I'd like to see a vision
for an entire area (village, city, whatever) - not just the prime
shopping district - to become, or approach, Car Free.

______________Ron


--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Miller
<christophermiller@...> wrote:
>
> An article in the Boston Globe about researchers' studies that show
> negative effects of urban vs natural environments on cognitive
> functioning. The general assumption is that urban environment = the
> current car-centric urban milieu we all know and love (so little -- I
> wonder why...). Parts of the article seem to point to the advantages
> of a carfree urban environment though I think, from what I am able to
> glean from the article, that it would actually be useful for research
> to be done (or cited if it already has been done) that compares the
> two extremes with car-free urban environments including fully
> pedestrianised areas in large cities such as Copenhagen's Strøget
> shopping street, and the kind of thing Joel has been arguing we should
> move toward, namely more human-scaled environments such as those found
> in Venice and many other smaller European and other Old World cities.
>
> Since the article is a popularising overview of research, it glosses
> over important questions about the precise factors (implied in the
> paragraph above) that contribute to strengthening or weakening of
> cognitive abilities: human density per se as opposed to crowding on
> sidewalks combined with roads crowded with roaring and speeding cars;
> oversized versus human-scaled buildings and street spaces; degree of
> planting/greenery versus quality; absence of overall natural stimuli
> versus natural stimuli for all the senses (and so on...). I wonder
> what thoughts people here might have for an experimental paradigm that
> would produce more solid and interesting results?
>
>
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_y\
our_brain/
>
>
> =========================================================
>
> How the city hurts your brain
> ...And what you can do about it
>
> By Jonah Lehrer
> January 2, 2009
> Email|Print|Single Page|Yahoo! Buzz|ShareThisText size – +
> THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-

---------------deletage--------------------

Hi Ron,

Ron Wolf wrote:

"(...)
- Perhaps already well known by others here that, in addition to being
known for fully passive housing, Darmstadt is also known for care free
development. From
http://www.sustainabilityproductions.com/maison_passive.htm -
"Darmstadt, in Germany, created an experimental neighbourhood called
K6 in which car traffic is prohibited"
(...)"

Ron, yes, carfree developments usually create *care* free environments :-)

The mobility concept of K6 is similar to the well-known Vauban area in Freiburg,
that means one cannot call it "carfree" along the definition of "carfree":
maximum of 0.2 parking space per housing unit, provided for CarSharing, visitors
and some special exceptions (positioned at the rim), and no car traffic inside
the area (except emergencies and other special cases).

Details of K6:
- two big parking garages at the edge of the project area
- carfree households can sign a special carfree contract, then they are not
obliged to buy a parking place. They only have to pay small money for a "reserve
space"
- the streets in the project area "should" have as minimum car traffic as
possible. That means in reality, everybody can drive through the streets. I
assume, that parking for more than deliveries is prohibited (I need to do more
research about)
- the whole project is still under construction, but a lot of it is already
finished. At the moment there are some strugges with the parking garages (not
yet finished) and cars parking in the residential streets
- and, similar to Vauban, they have a new tram (light rail) through the area,
and, again similar, the residential street through the area is an "U".

Here are 2 very informative websites (both only in german, but with some pics
and maps):

- the one from the City of Darmstadt is very detailed, check the start page,
there are maps and pics:
http://www.darmstadt.de/wirtschaft/stadtplanung/neues_wohnen/05583/index.html
in section "Projekte" are contact data to ALL housing projects !

- A very big blog from the K6 residents:
http://leben-in-k6.de/ ("living in K6", btw, the "k" stands for the district
"Kranichstein" = "Crane stone")
here is some information about the parking garages ("Parkpaletten") with
comments (for those understanding German):
http://leben-in-k6.de/blog/2007/02/08/planung-und-bau-der-parkpaletten-im-neubau\
gebiet/

in this blog are a few groups like "organisation", "green", but nothing
especially fór traffic/transportation.

From reading in this blog, my first impression is that most residents have a car
- but maybe I am wrong. I am planning to contact some K6 people to get some
updates, especially I am curious to find out how many households are carfree
(signed the carfree contract) in reality !

Probably I will publish the project in my website then (THANKS Ron, I wasn`t
aware before that K6 claims some carfree aspects !):
http://www.autofrei-wohnen.de/projects.html


... last number from Vauban was 80% carfree households (in the "carfree" area),
this is much more than expected and proofs the concept. Seems Darmstadt took
some lessons from Vauban ...

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

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

--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Wolf" <ronetele13@...> wrote:
> - looking at how/why the passive house movement is gaining actual
> investment and progressing in contrast to the long lingering
> dreaming/hoping of the car free movement.
>
> - recognizing that people interested in passive will have substantial
> overlap with those interested in car free. Perhaps the movements could
> be somehow joined?
>
> - recognizing that multi-family housing favors both lower energy use
> and car free transportation, bringing multi-family into the car free
> idea as a primary facilitator.


One possible factor, particularly in the U.S., is that we have now had
many decades of advertising to build expectations of the ideal life as
suburban sprawl.  Apartment or city living is seen as being unpleasant
due to closer proximity to unpleasant neighbors.

The passive house movement alleviates one source of friction with
close neighbors -- noise.  The superior insulation not only greatly
slows heat transfer, but it also blocks almost all noise from a
neighbor.  Perhaps that has won some converts.

Another factor is that the passive house allows most people to
continue living with the same habits and behaviors as before, while
saving money over time due to lower heating and cooling costs.
Suburbanites see carfree living as requiring a change in behavior, and
so are reluctant to truly consider it, even if it would bring monetary
savings from not having a car.  Monetary savings without having to
change behavior is much more attractive.

Finally, the US truly has a terrible transit system outside of its
roadways.  The US has seen decades of car-centric development,
occupies a large area, and most of the US lacks quality public
transit.  Americans typically have family and friends scattered all
over the country, as younger people pursue jobs and older people
escape the snow for warmer climates.  Without an adequate train
system, the only choice for travel is by air (expensive, unpleasant,
subject to unpredictable winter weather, often impractical for
transporting a large amount of furniture or Christmas gifts, etc.) or
by the convenience and go-anywhere, go-anytime ability of their car,
even in the face of long distances.  I think many Americans are afraid
to give up their car because it would really constrain their travel to
close family and friends.  Someday the world's demand for their share
of the oil will change that, but until we build a quality rail network
to provide comfortable and timely travel few truly carfree
developments will be built.

I see these European passive house developments as providing some hope
for the US, however.  If properly constructed and organically grown,
they probably would provide the basis for becoming wonderful carfree
cities in the future.  For example, by building parking garages at the
perimeter and extending rail through the city, rail can become more
convenient.  As the rail network becomes more extensive, the car is
needed less and less.  Perhaps if we design the parking garage for
future conversion to other use, such as a warehouse, for example, then
the passive house movement truly could be a step on the path to
carfree cities.  It certainly seems like it would have a better chance
of mainstream adoption in the US than going straight to carfree
cities, which would require an immediate change in behavior patterns.

The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership announces a new
coalition to promote sustainable passenger and freight transport via
rail.  Details at:

http://www.transact.org/onerail/

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







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

chbukeye,

Your reply to my question as to why passive solar seems to be gaining
momentum more easily than Car Free was very well thought out and
articulate. My eyes are opened, in a helpful way. Thank you.

Thinking of your observation that "we have now had many decades of
advertising to build expectations of the ideal life", I got a laugh of
recognition in reading a recently republished Dave Barry column that
speaks to the influence of advertising in putting pickup truck
ownership high on the list of needs of many American males.

Truck ads: Like a crock --->

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/dave-barry/story/838256.html

Might as well laugh.... And, as a American, though, perhaps, a
relatively enlightened one, I am still amazed by how the typical Euro
lifestyle of comparatively small living spaces in close the close
quarters of multi-family buildings seems to make no difference to the
good attitude and happiness of the population in general. On the
contrary people here seem to be more happy and less pissed off than
the typical American suburban dweller who is busily isolating in
relative luxury....

Is it possible to spread this vision?

___________________Ron


--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "chbuckeye" <coleridge3150@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Wolf" <ronetele13@> wrote:
> > - looking at how/why the passive house movement is gaining actual
> > investment and progressing in contrast to the long lingering
> > dreaming/hoping of the car free movement.
> >
> > - recognizing that people interested in passive will have substantial
> > overlap with those interested in car free. Perhaps the movements could
> > be somehow joined?
> >
> > - recognizing that multi-family housing favors both lower energy use
> > and car free transportation, bringing multi-family into the car free
> > idea as a primary facilitator.
>
>
> One possible factor, particularly in the U.S., is that we have now had
> many decades of advertising to build expectations of the ideal life as
> suburban sprawl.  Apartment or city living is seen as being unpleasant
> due to closer proximity to unpleasant neighbors.
>
> The passive house movement alleviates one source of friction with
> close neighbors -- noise.  The superior insulation not only greatly
> slows heat transfer, but it also blocks almost all noise from a
> neighbor.  Perhaps that has won some converts.
>
> Another factor is that the passive house allows most people to
> continue living with the same habits and behaviors as before, while
> saving money over time due to lower heating and cooling costs.
> Suburbanites see carfree living as requiring a change in behavior, and
> so are reluctant to truly consider it, even if it would bring monetary
> savings from not having a car.  Monetary savings without having to
> change behavior is much more attractive.
>
> Finally, the US truly has a terrible transit system outside of its
> roadways.  The US has seen decades of car-centric development,
> occupies a large area, and most of the US lacks quality public
> transit.  Americans typically have family and friends scattered all
> over the country, as younger people pursue jobs and older people
> escape the snow for warmer climates.  Without an adequate train
> system, the only choice for travel is by air (expensive, unpleasant,
> subject to unpredictable winter weather, often impractical for
> transporting a large amount of furniture or Christmas gifts, etc.) or
> by the convenience and go-anywhere, go-anytime ability of their car,
> even in the face of long distances.  I think many Americans are afraid
> to give up their car because it would really constrain their travel to
> close family and friends.  Someday the world's demand for their share
> of the oil will change that, but until we build a quality rail network
> to provide comfortable and timely travel few truly carfree
> developments will be built.
>
> I see these European passive house developments as providing some hope
> for the US, however.  If properly constructed and organically grown,
> they probably would provide the basis for becoming wonderful carfree
> cities in the future.  For example, by building parking garages at the
> perimeter and extending rail through the city, rail can become more
> convenient.  As the rail network becomes more extensive, the car is
> needed less and less.  Perhaps if we design the parking garage for
> future conversion to other use, such as a warehouse, for example, then
> the passive house movement truly could be a step on the path to
> carfree cities.  It certainly seems like it would have a better chance
> of mainstream adoption in the US than going straight to carfree
> cities, which would require an immediate change in behavior patterns.
>

Is it possible to spread the vision?

In the same way that the ads are teling us we don't have enough, we
aren't happy until we have ???, we are inferior etc (a solution to not
buying a pickup is dont' watch TV!), we will probably need the same
advertisers and media to sell Passive Houses, car free cities etc.

A reason why the Passive House movement is gaining momentum is because
it actually works. Buildings that take advantage of the sun to heat,
are superinsulated and airtight to reduce heat losses require more
thought at the design stage and more money spent on the build so the
investment is long term, not short term.
We are constantly thinking in the short term.
It's pretty natural to ask what's in it for me?
How do you sell long term thinking. Can you sell it?

Spencer

--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Wolf" <ronetele13@...> wrote:
>
> chbukeye,
>
> Your reply to my question as to why passive solar seems to be gaining
> momentum more easily than Car Free was very well thought out and
> articulate. My eyes are opened, in a helpful way. Thank you.
>
> Thinking of your observation that "we have now had many decades of
> advertising to build expectations of the ideal life", I got a laugh of
> recognition in reading a recently republished Dave Barry column that
> speaks to the influence of advertising in putting pickup truck
> ownership high on the list of needs of many American males.
>
> Truck ads: Like a crock --->
>
>
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/dave-barry/story/838256.html
>
> Might as well laugh.... And, as a American, though, perhaps, a
> relatively enlightened one, I am still amazed by how the typical Euro
> lifestyle of comparatively small living spaces in close the close
> quarters of multi-family buildings seems to make no difference to the
> good attitude and happiness of the population in general. On the
> contrary people here seem to be more happy and less pissed off than
> the typical American suburban dweller who is busily isolating in
> relative luxury....
>
> Is it possible to spread this vision?
>
> ___________________Ron
>
>
> --- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "chbuckeye" <coleridge3150@>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Wolf" <ronetele13@> wrote:
> > > - looking at how/why the passive house movement is gaining actual
> > > investment and progressing in contrast to the long lingering
> > > dreaming/hoping of the car free movement.
> > >
> > > - recognizing that people interested in passive will have
substantial
> > > overlap with those interested in car free. Perhaps the movements
could
> > > be somehow joined?
> > >
> > > - recognizing that multi-family housing favors both lower energy use
> > > and car free transportation, bringing multi-family into the car free
> > > idea as a primary facilitator.
> >
> >
> > One possible factor, particularly in the U.S., is that we have now had
> > many decades of advertising to build expectations of the ideal life as
> > suburban sprawl.  Apartment or city living is seen as being unpleasant
> > due to closer proximity to unpleasant neighbors.
> >
> > The passive house movement alleviates one source of friction with
> > close neighbors -- noise.  The superior insulation not only greatly
> > slows heat transfer, but it also blocks almost all noise from a
> > neighbor.  Perhaps that has won some converts.
> >
> > Another factor is that the passive house allows most people to
> > continue living with the same habits and behaviors as before, while
> > saving money over time due to lower heating and cooling costs.
> > Suburbanites see carfree living as requiring a change in behavior, and
> > so are reluctant to truly consider it, even if it would bring monetary
> > savings from not having a car.  Monetary savings without having to
> > change behavior is much more attractive.
> >
> > Finally, the US truly has a terrible transit system outside of its
> > roadways.  The US has seen decades of car-centric development,
> > occupies a large area, and most of the US lacks quality public
> > transit.  Americans typically have family and friends scattered all
> > over the country, as younger people pursue jobs and older people
> > escape the snow for warmer climates.  Without an adequate train
> > system, the only choice for travel is by air (expensive, unpleasant,
> > subject to unpredictable winter weather, often impractical for
> > transporting a large amount of furniture or Christmas gifts, etc.) or
> > by the convenience and go-anywhere, go-anytime ability of their car,
> > even in the face of long distances.  I think many Americans are afraid
> > to give up their car because it would really constrain their travel to
> > close family and friends.  Someday the world's demand for their share
> > of the oil will change that, but until we build a quality rail network
> > to provide comfortable and timely travel few truly carfree
> > developments will be built.
> >
> > I see these European passive house developments as providing some hope
> > for the US, however.  If properly constructed and organically grown,
> > they probably would provide the basis for becoming wonderful carfree
> > cities in the future.  For example, by building parking garages at the
> > perimeter and extending rail through the city, rail can become more
> > convenient.  As the rail network becomes more extensive, the car is
> > needed less and less.  Perhaps if we design the parking garage for
> > future conversion to other use, such as a warehouse, for example, then
> > the passive house movement truly could be a step on the path to
> > carfree cities.  It certainly seems like it would have a better chance
> > of mainstream adoption in the US than going straight to carfree
> > cities, which would require an immediate change in behavior patterns.
> >
>

I've been looking for this online for quite a while, then found it by
accident.  It's a Disney cartoon from 1950 exploring the
transformation of a normal fellow into a self-centered, violent slob
when he gets behind the wheel of the car. It posits that the illusion
of personal power engendered by the car is at the root of this
change...pretty funny, and pretty telling.  Nearly sixty years ago!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZAZ_xu0DCg

Rick

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

http://tinyurl.com/98ee83

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







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

THANKS  Rick !!

I believe this is one of a few crucial points in these times of world wide
financial desaster and upcoming un-employments ...

I quote from your mentioned article:
"(...)
In fact, public transportation creates 19 percent more jobs than the same
investment in building roads or highways, according to an analysis [
http://www.transact.org/library/decoder/jobs_decoder.pdf ] of a 2004 United
States Department of Transportation jobs creation model. And, according to
the California Transit Association [
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/01/_democratic_lea.html ], for
every $1 billion invested in new public transit projects, some 31,400 jobs
are created and $3 billion is pumped into the local economy.
(...)"


cheers, Markus
Carfree Living Berlin Collaborative
www.autofrei-wohnen.de/homeEngl.html


----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Risemberg
To: urban-ecology@yahoogroups.com ; Eric Miller ;
carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 3:43 PM
Subject: [carfree_cities] "Public Transit Fuels More Jobs"


http://tinyurl.com/98ee83

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

Hi All,

Is it possible that it's ONLY 19% more?

Think of all the PERMANENT jobs created by operating
the system.

Does the number refer only to capital expenditures?

Best,

Joel


At 2009-01-21 10:38, you wrote:

>THANKS Rick !!
>
>I believe this is one of a few crucial points in these times of world wide
>financial desaster and upcoming un-employments ...
>
>I quote from your mentioned article:
>"(...)
>In fact, public transportation creates 19 percent more jobs than the same
>investment in building roads or highways, according to an analysis [
><http://www.transact.org/library/decoder/jobs_decoder.pdf>http://www.transact.o\
rg/library/decoder/jobs_decoder.pdf ] of a 2004 United
>States Department of Transportation jobs creation model. And, according to
>the California Transit Association [
><http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/01/_democratic_lea.html>http://ww\
w.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/01/_democratic_lea.html ], for
>every $1 billion invested in new public transit projects, some 31,400 jobs
>are created and $3 billion is pumped into the local economy.
>(...)"
>
>cheers, Markus
>Carfree Living Berlin Collaborative
>www.autofrei-wohnen.de/homeEngl.html
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Richard Risemberg
>To: <mailto:urban-ecology%40yahoogroups.com>urban-ecology@yahoogroups.com ;
Eric Miller ;
><mailto:carfree_cities%40yahoogroups.com>carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 3:43 PM
>Subject: [carfree_cities] "Public Transit Fuels More Jobs"
>
><http://tinyurl.com/98ee83>http://tinyurl.com/98ee83
>
>--
>Richard Risemberg
><http://www.bicyclefixation.com>http://www.bicyclefixation.com
>http://www.newcolonist.com
><http://www.rickrise.com>http://www.rickrise.com
>
>



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

I've "clipped" this story on Clipmarks.com to give it a little more
visibility. Â
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/58360569-79D4-4E6D-B823-FE6FAE5A5A63/


=====================
Posted through Grouply, the better way
to access your Yahoo Groups like this one.
http://www.grouply.com/?code=post


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

Is the written word dead?  I am so disappointed these days when presented with a
link that I think may be interesting only to discover it leads to a video clip. 
Ugh.

-Bob Matter


--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Eric Snyder <egs@...> wrote:

> From: Eric Snyder <egs@...>
> Subject: [carfree_cities] Re: "Public Transit Fuels More Jobs"
> To: carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, January 23, 2009, 4:28 AM
> I've "clipped" this story on Clipmarks.com to
> give it a little more
> visibility. Â
> http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/58360569-79D4-4E6D-B823-FE6FAE5A5A63/
>
>
> =====================
> Posted through Grouply, the better way
> to access your Yahoo Groups like this one.
> http://www.grouply.com/?code=post
>
>
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China, a huge country with a population four times that of the US,
lays to rest the myth that trains aren't suitable for our "unique" US
geography. While Washington and local municipalities prepare to fight
the last war by laying down more wasteful and inefficient lane-miles
for cars, China's top stimulus priority is building out its rail
system, both passenger and freight. To quote Keith Bradsher from his
Nw York Times article:

> China will spend $88 billion constructing intercity rail lines, the
> highest priority in the plan. It spent $44 billion last year and
> just $12 billion as recently as 2004, said John Scales, the
> transport coordinator for China at the World Bank.
>

And:

> Feng Fei, the director general of industrial economics at the
> policy research unit of China’s cabinet, the State Council, said
> that steep increases in railroad investments would create lasting
> benefits. The goal is to slow China’s dependence on personal cars
> and imported oil, to reduce air pollution and to relieve the annual
> shortage of seats on trains during Chinese New Year, when millions
> of people visit their families, he said.
>
> China has already built as many miles of high-speed passenger rail
> lines in the last four years as Europe has in two decades. A new
> bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin, opened last summer, travels
> at up to 217 miles an hour; the top speed of Amtrak’s Acela Express
> trains in the Northeastern United States is 150 m.p.h., and it is
> only briefly attained.
>

While China is allocating some of its stimulus funds towards roads
and airports--both highly inefficient financially and
environmentally--the bulk of spending is directed towards
establishing or enhancing clean, efficient rail.  Rail is not only
more efficient in energy use, but far more efficient in land use than
roads or even air.  (As an illustration, the 3,500 acres of Los
Angeles International Airport, one of the world's busiest, handle
around 165,000 passengers per day; whereas the Shinjuku rail and
subway station in downtown Tokyo, which occupies a couple of city
blocks and is mostly underground, with usable building space over
much of it, handles 4,000,000 boardings per day.)

Read the complete article:

http://tinyurl.com/chinarail

Thanks to Christopher Hart of Streetsblog for bringing this to our
attention.

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







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Hi,
Can anyone send me examples or pictures of bike parking that's been built into
an apartment building? I need to find a good way to store 25+ bikes for
residents in a building I'm helping to rehab.
Elizabeth Trice
Portland, Maine





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