Feb 9, 10
My Favorite Neighborhood
A rousing success story that shows how great streets foster great communities Last year Project for Public Spaces and I published the Great Neighborhood Book, which offers hundreds of ideas from around the world about making community improvements on issues ranging from crime prevention to environmental restoration. Since then almost everyone I meet asks: What's your favorite neighborhood? I should have an answer ready. But each time the question arises, my mind starts wandering through...
Jane McGonigal on Gaming for Good
A Worldchanging Interview Solving the world’s biggest problems will require a superhuman outpouring of energy, passion, creativity, and collaboration. Fortunately, Jane McGonigal has a strategy for unleashing people’s capacity to take on hard challenges: playing games. A celebrated designer, researcher, and future forecaster, McGonigal specializes in alternate reality games that engage massive online audiences in real-world issues ranging from energy shortages to health pandemics. ...
The Next Decade's Top Sustainability Trends
By Warren Karlenzig What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day looked at as 1) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball. 1. Bikes Culture 2.0 Time period: 2010-2019 Around the world, bicycles are becoming a potent talisman of our urban post-carbon future. The city of Copenhagen is making...
A Message From Copenhagen: Climate Plan Must Include Walkable Urbanism
At a panel discussion yesterday at the Copenhagen climate summit, American policymakers and transit experts delivered a clear message: Walkable urban development must be part of any effective plan to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the magic of live webcasts, I can relay a few highlights for Streetsblog readers. Without directing future development toward walkable urbanism, the climate impacts of sprawl will overwhelm other efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, said...
Takin' Care of Business, Copenhagen Style
by Bracken Hendricks A dispatch from the Denmark conference If you listened to my friends over at Fox news and the Heritage Foundation, you might be forgiven for thinking that the polyglot conference going on this week in Denmark was a conspiracy of commie sympathizers and faceless bureaucrats hell bent on taking down the global economy – or at least that part of it located in the continental USA. Well, I’m sorry to report that the view from street level is a little bit different. ...
From King Parakramabahu to Ethical Fashion
Some people blame the Enlightenment for our present troubles. The scientific revolution, they say, gave man ideas above his station. We frequently harm natural systems, goes the charge, because of our delusional belief that we are separate from, and have dominion over, nature. This myth of apartness, the charges conclude, dulls the responsibility we'd feel if we felt ourselves to be co-dependent members of natural community. History suggests that modernity is not uniquely to blame for...
How Carbon Markets Work in the Northeastern US
With all the hand-wringing over the alleged risk of market manipulation in cap and trade, you'd almost forget that the United States already has a carbon cap and trade program up and running. But it does. RGGI, a regional program among 10 Northeast states, has been auctioning permits, allowing trading on a secondary market, and even, in a way, encouraging trading in derivatives. And guess what's happened so far? ...we find no evidence of anticompetitive conduct....
When Green Isn't Green Enough: UC Observer Interviews Alex on the State of the Movement
In their most recent issue, The UC Observer put Lisa Van de Ven's article exploring the state of the environmental movement on the cover. Her piece When Green Isn't Green Enough poses this question to readers: 'Think you’re doing your bit for the environment? Here’s the deal: you’re just getting started.' Van de Ven interviewed our own Alex Steffen for the article. Although the entire thing is worth a read, here is some of what Alex had to say: By making small changes like buying...
Hossein Derakhshan, Now Detained for Over a Year
Hossein Derakhshan (”Hoder”) has now been in prison in Iran for more than a year. My friend Cyrus Farivar has followed his case closely, and has been in touch with Hoder’s family, who confirm that he’s beeing held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Reports from the activist group Human Rights in Iran suggest that Hoder has been held in solitary confinement for long periods of time, beaten and otherwise mistreated, and that Hoder was considering a hunger strike...
"Reverse Trick-or-Treaters" Deliver Fair Trade Chocolate
Dressed in masks and outfits reminiscent of the film The Matrix, a group of foreign exchange students celebrated their first Halloween in proper fashion on Saturday in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But the classmates turned the U.S. tradition on its head. In addition to accepting candy, the students handed back their own Fair Trade-certified, organic dark chocolate. "Farmers are paid more with Fair Trade, so they don't have to live in poverty and their children can get an...
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