on Vauban posted by Lance Armstrong on Twitter
Who says professional cycleriders aren’t openminded and well-informed people. Check out this recent posting by 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong on Twitter refering to a New York Times article about the village of Vauban, Freiburg, Germany, which is an example in terms of sustainability and decent infrastructure for prioritizing walking and cycling in the neighborhood.
“Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here.”
Read the full article from The New York Times here.
Check out more of The New York Times photos from Vauban here.
passionate people # 6: Wangari Maathai
Wangari Mathai Originally uploaded by cheryl_paris
From Worldchanging.org: Sustainability in a bright green world is about much more than environmentalism. It is about preserving our natural resources, yes. But it’s also about seeing those resources holistically, and understanding that a healthy environment is the foundation for human health and happiness, for international security, and for economic stability.
Few people embody this vision as passionately as Dr. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan scholar, activist and politician who in 2004 became the first woman from Africa, and the first environmentalist, to join the ranks of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Maathai has made a life’s work of challenging tradition, questioning authority and exceeding expectations. At a time when few Kenyan women were educated, she won a scholarship to attend college in the United States, where she studied biological sciences as an undergraduate and later earned a masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Kenya and the University of Nairobi, she become became the first woman in her country to be awarded a Ph.D.
In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which has mobilized women across Kenya to plant trees – and has paid them to do so. The Movement has since planted more than 30 million trees, and was recently depicted in the documentary Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. Maathai has been a fearless activist and spokesperson for issues including women’s economic rights, poverty and education. She was elected to Kenya’s parliament by an overwhelming majority vote in December 2002, and served as Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife from 2003 until 2007.
Earlier this year, she released her third book, The Challenge for Africa, in which she puts forth realistic but ambitious strategies for Africans to end a decades-long cycle of corruption, poverty, ignorance, environmental degradation and other deep-rooted problems. The solutions, she says, must start with the African people themselves; they must embrace and exude an image of their positive potential rather than their victimhood, and that they must demand respect and justice beginning with their own governments.
Worldchanging had the honor of speaking with Dr. Maathai during her visit to Seattle in April.
Julia Levitt: In The Challenge for Africa, you argue that of all of the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015, it’s the seventh — environmental sustainability — that is most important. How is a healthy environment the keystone for all of these economic and social goals?
Wangari Maathai: The way I look at it, we tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty and send children to school and provide health. But how are you going to do that? In Kenya, one of our biggest exports is coffee. Where do you grow coffee? You grow coffee in the land. To be able to grow coffee you need rain, you need special kinds of soils that are found on hillsides, and that means you have to protect that land from soil erosion so you don’t lose the soil. You also want to make sure that when the rains come you’re going to be able to hold that water and have it go into the ground so that the streams and the rivers keep flowing and the ground is relatively humid for these plants. For the rains and the rivers you need forests and you need to make sure these your forests are all protected, that there is no logging, that there is no charcoal burning and all the activities that destroy the forest. All this really needs to be done so that you can be able to grow good coffee, so that you can have an income, so that you can send your children to school, so that you can buy medicine, so that you can take them to hospitals, so that you can care for the women, especially mothers.
We see that the environment is something to exploit, because we see the environment in terms of minerals for example, or forests, or even raw materials that we produce on our land, or even land itself. We see it in terms of what we can exploit rather than the medium in which all of these activities have to take place. But you can’t reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.
Read the full interview here.
blog of the week: StreetFilms
ciclovia Originally uploaded by rubens rodrigues
This is the classic movie from StreetFilms about the fantastic ciclovia event in Bogota, Colombia.
Learn more, enjoy, promote!
The mission of StreetFilms is to document livable streets best practices throughout the world and enlighten the general public that their streets can be safer for pedestrians and bicycles. The ultimate goal is to encourage more human-friendly cities and rethink the way our streets are allocated.
Streetfilms does this by making sometimes complex traffic and transportation concepts simpler by using video, animations, and language that the public can understand. They can also be frequently humorous. Our productions are used as Creative Commons tools the world over by communities and advocacy organizations to fight for better conditions in their neighborhoods.
Streetfilms is part of the Livable Streets Initiative which includes our sister sites Streetsblog and StreetsWiki. There are two full time filmmakers on staff, who usually shoot and edit their own videos independently as one-person productions.
inspired bicycling
Cam whites bmx hillside dirt jam 3 2009 Originally uploaded by tommycorra
Check this amazing video – sent to me by Christina Sydow (Thx).
ten really big things
Make Poverty History! Originally uploaded by rogiro
Just to let one more blogpost deal with Earth Day I want to point everyones attention to Alex Steffens (Worldchanging) blogpost for Earth Day 2009: Ten really big things we can do to save the planet.
Alex makes the following point in his intro:
“Traditionally, this is a day devoted to making green accessible to all. It’s a day when each of us is invited to take small, individual steps toward reducing our carbon footprints, limiting our waste, or restoring the environment. See how easy it is – and how fun – to do your part to save the planet? Whether Earth Day does any good is a subject of some real debate around here.
Admittedly, this year’s goals from the Earth Day Network (EDN) show that the holiday might be heading in the right direction. The EDN calls for action and civic engagement toward renewable energy, sustainable consumption and green jobs … and nods to the approaching COP15.
But in general, Earth Day is still being used primarily to sell crap that won’t make a difference. Our inboxes were still flooded with press announcements touting Earth Day solar bikinis; Earth Day buy-this-thing-and-we’ll-plant-a-tree promotions; Earth Day specials on a greener SUV.”
There are no simple steps worth caring about. We’ll only head off disaster by taking steps — together — that are massive, societal and thorough. Most of what needs to be done involves political engagement, systems redesign, and cultural change. It can’t be done in an afternoon and then forgotten about. So screw the little things.
Here are 10 big, difficult, world-changing concepts Worldchanging can get behind:
1. ELIMINATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Czech crowds cheered for U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent announcement that America must lead the charge to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. But no matter which nation or alliance takes the helm, reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction is a critical part of sustainability. Simply put, nuclear weapons have no place in a bright green future.
2. STABILIZE THE BOTTOM BILLION
In order to have a resilient and peaceful planet, we must first meet the basic needs of all the people who live here. Each person deserves clean water, adequate sanitation, and access to health care. But building this basic foundation will also require stability of a more intangible kind, including giving every person access to education, protecting civil rights around the globe, and putting an end to human servitude. As a society, we’ve outlined the plan in various ways, most notably in the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. And we have the means to do it in this century, through advances in community empowerment, sustainable development and microlending programs.
3. CREATE A GLOBALLY TRANSPARENT SOCIETY
We write often about transparency, which is part of the foundation for a just, equitable, sustainable and democratic future. This involves transparency and accountability in both business and government. It also includes tools that let us easily see and understand the backstory of the products in our lives, from the homes we live in to the food on our plates. Open-source approaches are excellent tools for promoting transparency, since these collaborative problem-solving systems increasingly eradicate hidden agendas and exclusivity.
4. BE PREPARED, GLOBALLY
Although no one wants to live in fear of uncontrollable, unforeseen disasters, it’s hard to argue against having a well thought out emergency preparedness plan. These plans help people know what do to when a disaster strikes, decreasing the level of panic and improving the probability that more people will escape unharmed. On a small scale, families and neighbors can communicate and coordinate with each other to create plans that provide food and shelter for their communities. And on a larger scale, states and nations can create response plans that effectively deliver aid, as well as short- and long-term shelter solutions.
5. EMPOWER WOMEN
Equality for women is more than a justice issue. By giving women equal rights we also help create a more sustainable world. Research shows that women who have access to education and rights over their own bodies choose to have fewer children, who they can give more to. Overpopulation is a serious issue, with huge implications for problems like climate change. By giving women rights we are investing in what Kim Stanley Robinson calls the some of the best climate change technology available today.
6. ENABLE A FUTURE FORWARD DIET
One of the most readily available solutions for creating a more sustainable world is also one that we might have the most personal control over: our diets. We can greatly decrease our environmental and social footprints by eating locally, organically and mostly meat and dairy free (according to the U.N. report Livestock’s Long Shadow, livestock produce more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s transport combined). But in order for more people to be able to choose better options, we also need to transform the food system. That means not only transparency innovations, such as labels and codes that tell you where your food came from and how it was produced, but also economic and regulatory support for a transformed relationship between farmers, food sellers and eaters.
7. DOCUMENT ALL LIFE
Scientists estimate that our planet is home to somewhere between 10 and 100 million species. We’ve described only 1.8 million: the rest are yet to be discovered. Today, scientists are using new techniques and tools to discover and name more new species than at any other time in taxonomic history. Ironically this “Age of Discovery” is simultaneously the Sixth Extinction, the largest mass-extinction since the Death of the Dinosaurs.
8. NEGOTIATE AN EFFECTIVE CLIMATE TREATY
We need a global treaty that holds all players accountable to decreasing their carbon emissions. This treaty must decrease global carbon levels to 350 parts per million by 2080, if we are to avoid a series of global tipping points that will push us over the edge and make life on this planet unbearable for the majority of life on Earth
9. BUILD BRIGHT GREEN CITIES
We are now an urban planet. In general, urbanization offers many benefits. But we need to design cities that allow people access to their greatest potential within a framework of sustainable prosperity. Bright green cities are designed so that residents have access to public parks, basic goods, entertainment, services and jobs within walking distance. Bright green cities include transit systems and mobility options to allow people to get from one place to another comfortably and on time without the use of a private vehicle. Bright green cities feature carbon-neutral buildings that are healthy for the people who live and work inside them. They use strategies like zero-waste plans and producer takeback laws to channel materials in closed loops.
10. BUILD NO NEW HIGHWAYS
It’s time to stop building highways, and stop developing the disconnected, suburban sprawl they support. Instead, local and national governments in the Global North need to focus their resources on improving the streets and infrastructure that’s already in place, making those streets work for all forms of mobility, from transit to cycling, to walking, to driving and cargo transport. This solution must go hand-in-hand with building comfortable, attractive, bright green cities where people can live densely while living well. If we redefine the model for growth, density and transportation in the industrialized world, we will help rapidly growing nations avoid the problems associated with auto-dependent development.
Source: Worldchanging.
happy earth day today!
Earth Day Planet Originally uploaded by -Greyson-
Earth Day, April 22, each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years.
It was into such a world that the very first Earth Day was born.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. ” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”
At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.
Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.
On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.
Earth Day is serious. But to celebrate this years Earth Day, the Huffington Post have gathered som of the funniest jokes from late night comedy also. Check the video here.
blog of the week: architecture for humanity
Architecture for Humanity Originally uploaded by Brian Kroeker (non-commissioned design proposal for AfH)
“For the past twenty years the voice of the architecture profession has mainly been drowned out by the computer generated sky-piercing towers of luxury.”
Thus begins a recent blog post in the Huffington Post by Architecture for Humanity founder, Cameron Sinclair. In the post, Cameron ponders the recent developments in architecture, and is looking forward to a ‘Mexican standdown’ with avantgarde architect extraordinaire, Zaha Hadid, at a gathering in London.
Cameron continues:
“Year after year the biggest names in architecture tried to out do each other in what is technically feasible with oddly named styles of ‘deconstruction’, ‘blobitecture’ and ‘ribbon architecture’. This constant craving to create jewels of desire in the urban fabric left the general public wondering what on earth we do. Now, with the global economy in tailspin, these exercises in object making have come to a crashing halt. For many of us, we couldn’t be more thankful.
An architecture of excess vs. an architecture of relevance
In December 2008 New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff began his weekly column exclaiming ‘Who knew a year ago that we were nearing the end of one of the most delirious eras in modern architectural history?’ For the vast majority of design and construction professionals this era ended long ago. It’s as though the New York Times were the last to offer a eulogy at a funeral that long since took place.
The fact is, there has been a split forming in the profession for quite sometime. While some in the industry pushed the boundaries of how to build, a new younger group of professionals began to question why we build and who to build for. This week Architecture for Humanity turned ten and we were stunned to realize we had over 40,000 professionals as part of our network – most of whom are part of this later group. We’ve hit a point where the architecture of excess and the architecture of relevance are set to collide. Given the global crises around us, I know which side I’m rooting for.
Why? Let’s take a step back. On a global level 1:7 people live in unplanned settlements, favelas, refugee camps or internally displaced camps. Close to 5 billion people live in inadequate living conditions and have little access to education, health care and adequate sanitation. Almost none of these communities utilize the services of design professionals. For those of us that work in this arena we are being swamped with requests for help from the camps in the eastern Congo to the hoovervilles in southern California. The desire for well built, sustainable structures is immense and young professionals seeking meaning are finding themselves drawn to providing their expertise to these communities. There is immense opportunity for architects to work in the service of humanity rather awkwardly trying to define it or worse impose a solution on it.”
Watch Cameron Sinclair on TED Talks:
Foreman is cut and the fight is postponed
This evening (April 11) I was set to debate Zaha Hadid on ethics in architecture at the Barbican in London. I had flown in specially and in the run-up to tonights’ debate I imagined it to be a sort of Ali vs. Foreman fight over the role of the architect within the built environment and how we, as a profession, can act and react to the current economic downtown.
In the circles of the cultural elite I know I’m stepping on very thin ice. Given that she is the first female Pritzker Prize winner I’ve been told more than once that ‘one cannot criticize her’. While Ms. Hadid has certainly made a lasting impact in the architectural discourse, the physical structures created have been on occasion environmentally unsound, exclusive in nature and at times ethically dubious. They fight for attention, piercing the fabric of the city instead of weaving it into a stronger and more interconnected environment.
As for our debate tonight sure enough, as is her reputation, she pulled out and sent an understudy. So much like the scenario that played out in the Ali/Foreman duel, our one on one debate is currently postponed.”
…
“The argument was never about starachitect vs. non-starachitect but how we adapt and change as a group of professionals that is dedicated to improving the physical environments that we call life.”
There is no ‘architecture with a big A’ there is only architecture and how we practice it matters not just for the state of the world but the survival of the practice.
Read more about Architecture for Humanity.
change the light
No more Incandescent light bulbs at UNC Originally uploaded by UNC Sustainability Office
You can make this change easily – and help the climate and the planet.
20% — Currently, about 20% of the world’s electricity is used for lighting.
75% — About 1/4 of that is for residential uses, and the rest is for commercial/industrial/governmental buildings.
5% — A typical incandescent bulb converts only about 5% of the electricity it uses into light, and it needs to be replaced approximately every 1,000 hours.
Source: Treehugger
empire state building going green
Empire State Building – 1958 Originally uploaded by avaloncm
The Empire State Building, the symbol of New York’s pre-eminence that held the title of the world’s tallest skyscraper for 41 years, is seeking to pierce through the pall of economic gloom that has descended on Manhattan by turning itself green.
The owners of the building announced yesterday they were investing an additional $20m to reduce its carbon footprint and energy consumption. The retrofit is being added to a renovation of the art deco structure that starts this summer already costing half a billion dollars.
It takes a certain pluck to announce such a substantial investment in the middle of a recession. But then the Empire State Building was born in hard times.
Work on the site in midtown Manhattan began in January 1930, months after the Wall Street crash. It went up as the New York and US economies went down.
Now the current owners of the 102-storey office block, Wien & Malkin, hope to buck the economic trend again by improving the building and charging higher rents. Part of the hard sell to potential new clients will be its “greenness” once the work is completed in 2013.
The plan aims to cut the use of energy by almost 40%, which would in turn reduce the emissions of CO2 from the building by some 105,000 metric tonnes a year. That is no easy feat, bearing in mind that the Empire State has some 6,500 windows, 73 elevators and a total floorspace of 2.6 million square feet.
All the windows will have an extra layer of insulation added by secreting a coated film between two glass panes – done in situ to avoid pollution caused by transporting the glass from an outside destination. Insulation will be added behind radiators, and the cooling system in the basement will be replaced with new more efficient machines.
Individual workers in the office spaces will be encouraged to take responsibility for their own emissions by being given access through their computers to monitors which will tell them how much energy is being expended in their part of the building.
None of the changes though will be visible to the outside world. The owners have decided that the famous coloured lights – the top of the Empire State turns green, for instance, on St Patrick’s day and was a patriotic red, white and blue for several months after 9/11 – will remain intact, arguing they are responsible for relatively little energy consumption.
Source: The Guardian
showering sustainably
Shower Originally uploaded by kookybites
The process of cleaning your body is an ironic one, environmentally. While your body becomes clean, the environment may become dirtier. Soaps and shampoos and zesty body washes often contain chemicals that can do all manner of harm to the ecosystem. The water treatment plant will treat the water, but it won’t be able to remove everything. Some chemicals can disrupt the frog population. Others will cause too much algae to grow. It is important that we take special care to ensure that our showers and baths are as clean as we want to be. Just because something has gone down the drain, doesn’t mean it is gone forever.
Here are a 11 tips for a greener tub time.
- Install a low flow showerhead.
- Take shorter showers.
- Take cooler showers.
- Ditch the vinyl shower curtain.
- Try a navy shower.
- Prefer (short-ish) showers to baths.
- Make your own shampoo.
- Reduce your shampoo use.
- Use natural soaps, conditioners and shampoos that won’t harm the environment.
- Instead of letting your water drain, use the grey water for outdoor purposes.
- Try a Japanese shower.
Source: Planet Green
