New cars are getting more fuel-efficient every year. Engineers are deploying all kinds of whiz-bang technology to achieve these gains. But the no-brainer most effective and immediate way to reduce our fuel use is, drum roll, to drive less.
And that’s exactly what is happening on a per-capita
Will electric vehicles ever become the common way to drive? What is needed is an infrastructure that allows easy recharging of the vehicle (such as gasoline stations are for the internal combustion engine). There are two key barriers to plug-ins: first, the current battery technology is very expensive, adding thousands of
The effects of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal cities present a new challenge to urban planners, one that inspires the exhibition, Rising Currents, now at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.
Five teams of architects and landscape designers were asked to envision projects for New York City’s future coastline. The plans all create what they call “soft” infrastructures — landscapes that will allow rising sea levels to flow within and around the building sites where power, water, sewer, and gas lines are encased in waterproof vaults beneath the sidewalks.
The plans imagine the open spaces surrounding these building sites becoming estuarine habitats that will provide cost-effective storm-water management and revitalize the harbor’s biodiversity.
Authors Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, renowned city planners who brought the issue of suburban sprawl to the forefront of the national debate, have come together again with The Smart Growth Manual, which details the path to creating better, greener and environmentally-friendly communities.
CleanTechies caught up with Speck for three questions on better living through planning.
CleanTechies: When you hear the term smart growth, what does it mean to you?
Jeff Speck: It’s the opposite of sprawl. And sprawl is identified as growth that spreads out at low density, separates uses and relies on automotive transportation and has a concomitant disinvestment in city centers. So smart growth is the attempt to reverse those trends, or to continue the momentum that’s already been begun toward reversing those trends.
I have a specific message for CleanTechies: Sustainability is about systems. Unless we approach our footprint systematically, we’re just kind of nibbling around the edges. And I think almost all of the gizmo green solutions to climate change and post-peak oil challenges are nibbling around the edges without getting to the meat of the problem.
In Cape Town, South Africa, as well as in many U.S. cities, wealthy suburban dwellers choke roads driving into the city, eschewing the public transit that shuttles blue collar workers. The addition of bus and rail lines in the city’s center in anticipation of hosting the 2010 World Cup has city leaders increasing efforts to get people out of their cars and on to public transit.
In Cape Town, most white collar workers drive themselves to work, fearing crime on trains and on the 20-seat shared taxis that shuttle one-third of inner city commuters. Business leaders from the Cape Town Partnership, along with the University of Michigan and Ford, are working with the city’s largest employers to get more of the 400,000 daily commuters moving by alternative modes of transportation by establishing mobility hubs.