Showing posts tagged sustainable communities

plantedcity:

Slideshow | Patrick Condon’s ‘Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies for the Post-Carbon World’

From Island Press:

How can the design of cities address the challenge of climate change? Patrick Condon, author of Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities, presents simple guidelines for community design that can help cities flourish in the post-carbon world.

For more on Condon you may want to check out this 7 minute presentation.

(Photo credit: Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Institute)

(Reblogged from plantedcity) Bookmark and Share

plantedcity:

Talk: Joyride: Walking and Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet

Mia Birk was in Vancouver last week to talk about making our lifestyles, cities and planet healthier by getting around more by foot and pedal. Birk, CEO of Alta Planning + Design, an advisor to the Post Carbon Institute, and former manager of Portland’s Bicycle Program (1993-1999) recently wrote the book Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet, which:

tells the dramatic and enlightening behind-the-scenes story of how a group of determined visionaries transformed Portland into a cycling mecca and inspired the nation.

Through a panoply of hilarious and poignant stories, Birk takes readers on a 20-year rollercoaster journey of global and local discovery and education, while bringing into sharp focus some of the planet’s most pressing and hotly debated energy and transportation issues, policies, shortcomings, and solutions.

Her talk follows in the same vein and is a great compliment to the people focused city building efforts of Jan Gehl and others.

You can also read a summary of Birk’s book and highlights of Portland’s bike success story here. I was particularly impressed by the following bit information:

Portland built its entire 300-mile network of bike ways for the cost of a single mile of urban freeway.

(Image: http://tinyurl.com/22oeat5)

(Reblogged from plantedcity) Bookmark and Share

Video: Munich’s Innovative Strategy to Encourage Biking in the City

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Book: 'Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Research and Development on Urban Systems'

Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Research and Development on Urban Systems is a new book from Daniel Schaffer and Derek Vollmer. The book’s publisher, the National Research Council, has made it available as a free download for those happy reading a PDF version. 

The book is described as follows:

More than half of the world’s people now live in cities. In the United States, the figure is 80 percent. It is worthwhile to consider how this trend of increased urbanization, if inevitable, could be made more sustainable. One fundamental shortcoming of urban research and programs is that they sometimes fail to recognize urban areas as systems. Current institutions and actors are not accustomed to exploring human-environment interactions, particularly at an urban-scale. The fact is that these issues involve complex interactions, many of which are not yet fully understood. Thus a key challenge for the 21st century is this: How can we develop sustainable urban systems that provide healthy, safe and affordable environments for the growing number of Americans living in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas? 

To address this question, the National Research Council organized a workshop exploring the landscape of urban sustainability research programs in the United States. The workshop, summarized in this volume, was designed to allow participants to share information about the activities and planning efforts of federal agencies, along with related initiatives by universities, the private sector, nongovernmental groups, state and local agencies, and international organizations. Participants were encouraged to explore how urban sustainability can move beyond analyses devoted to single disciplines and sectors to systems-level thinking and effective interagency cooperation. To do this, participants examined areas of potential coordination among different R&D programs, with special consideration given to how the efforts of federal agencies can best complement and leverage the efforts of other key stakeholders. Pathways to Urban Sustainability offers a broad contextual summary of workshop presentations and discussions for distribution to federal agencies, regional organizations, academic institutions, think tanks and other groups engaged in urban research.

SG

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Planning a Sustainable City in the Desert | New York Times  View high resolution

Planning a Sustainable City in the Desert | New York Times 

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Bicycle City | Architizer Following up on last week’s incredible story of a pedestrian and cycling community based on Zermatt, Switzerland (but located in South Carolina!), we’ve gotten the inside scoop on the appropriately named Bicycle City. While we’re seeing more projects that address critical world issues (see: MoMA’s upcoming exhibition Small Scale, Big Change, for example), the planners behind Bicycle City see the city plan as a holistic approach to solving society’s problems as it addresses several problems at once, like obesity, climate change, and alternative energy. Co-founder Joe Mellett tells us that he envisions car-free towns as a “showcase for wind and solar energy as well as architects who specialize in green and LEED-certified problems.” (Especially prescient, perhaps, since the Southeastern United States is one of the worst perpetrators of carbon emissions in the United States.) We chatted with Mellett about his grand plans for car-free living and what it takes to build a contained community in the Bible Belt. View high resolution

Bicycle City | Architizer

Following up on last week’s incredible story of a pedestrian and cycling community based on Zermatt, Switzerland (but located in South Carolina!), we’ve gotten the inside scoop on the appropriately named Bicycle City.

While we’re seeing more projects that address critical world issues (see: MoMA’s upcoming exhibition Small Scale, Big Change, for example), the planners behind Bicycle City see the city plan as a holistic approach to solving society’s problems as it addresses several problems at once, like obesity, climate change, and alternative energy.

Co-founder Joe Mellett tells us that he envisions car-free towns as a “showcase for wind and solar energy as well as architects who specialize in green and LEED-certified problems.” (Especially prescient, perhaps, since the Southeastern United States is one of the worst perpetrators of carbon emissions in the United States.)

We chatted with Mellett about his grand plans for car-free living and what it takes to build a contained community in the Bible Belt.

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The Nature of Cities explores both the nature in our own backyards - Austin and San Diego and the possibilities in projects of cities of the future - Malmo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Freiburg, Amsterdam and Paris.

The film features Sustainable Communities professor Timothy Beatley as he tours these places with City Planners, Landscape Architects, Ecologists and Residents.

Commentary by Richard Louv (Last Child in the Woods) and Dr. Stephen Kellert (Biophilic Design) provide the background for looking at the living possibilities of how we can be in an urban environment integrated with the nature around us.

60 minutes

Produced by Throughline Productions

The film is reviewed here

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EcoDistricts | Portland Sustainability Institute

An EcoDistrict is a neighborhood or district with a broad commitment to improve its environmental performance in an integrated strategy that includes engagement, self governance and benchmarking to make informed decisions about demand management, green building, infrastructure, and community engagement best practices. 

To learn more about Eco District and the Portland Sustainability Institute, visit http://www.pdxinstitute.org 

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Smarter Cities: Portland's EcoDistricts Initiative

In 2009, the Portland Sustainability Institute, in partnership with the City of Portland, launched the EcoDistricts Initiative as part of the Portland region’s broadening commitment to sustainability. The EcoDistricts Initiative is a comprehensive strategy to accelerate sustainable neighborhood…

(Reblogged from smartercities) Bookmark and Share

Cycling Copenhagen: Through North American Eyes

While Streetfilms was in Copenhagen for the Velo-City 2010 conference, of course we wanted to showcase its biking greatness.  But we were also looking to take a different perspective then all the myriad other videos out there.  Since there were an abundance of advocates, planners, and city transportation officials attending from the U.S. and Canada, we thought it’d be awesome to get their reactions to the city’s built environment and compare to bicycling conditions in their own cities.

If you’ve never seen footage of the Copenhagen people riding bikes during rush hour - get ready - it’s quite a site, as nearly 38% of all transportation trips in Copenhagen are done by bike.  With plenty of safe, bicycle infrastructure (including hundreds of miles of physically separated cycletracks) its no wonder that you see all kinds of people on bikes everywhere.  55% of all riders are female, and you see kids as young as 3 or 4 riding with packs of adults.

SG

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