More TED talks

Here is a TED talk from who is an author. While she does not talk about city planning explicitly she informs us about the cautiousness and responsibility we must have as people who potentially have the power to influence the world with our perspective.

The other video is of Isabel Allende that also indirectly gets at similar themes but is just a great talk overall.

A PLACE for Sustainable Living on San Pablo

For those who haven't spotted it already, there's a new place just south of the assigned San Pablo corridor that warrants a visit. It's actually called A PLACE (People Linking Art, Community and Ecology) aka Oakeleyville.

The best way to find out what's going on there is to check the calendar on the website below or join the email list. Tonight for example they had a screening of the documentary, 'End of Suburbia,' (along with a potluck and discussion) in coordination with Transition North Oakland.

Here's part of their "first-ever newsletter" for those interested in checking it out:

Hello Everyone!

Here is our first-ever newsletter, to better inform you about the increasing number of ways to participate over at A PLACE for Sustainable Living!

1. *Transition North Oakland would like to invite all of our neighbors to join

us at a PLACE for Sustainable Living for a potluck, film screening and discussion.

*Friday, July 15th, 6:00p.m. to 10:00p.m. *

*Gather for informal conversation and potluck at 6pm. Don't worry if you
can't bring a dish, your presence is enough. Veggie soup will be provided by
Transition North Oakland. Yum!*

*Movie will begin promptly at 7pm. We will be screening the award winning
documentary, "End of Suburbia," followed by Open Space discussion. With
brutal honesty and a touch of irony, "The End of Suburbia" explores the
American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical
era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply.*

*Sliding-scale donation from $5 to $20; no one
will be turned away for lack of funds.*

2. San Pablo Clean Up, Sunday from 11 am-3 pm Facebook event

3. Sunday Get'ER Done Day:

Noon till Sundown

Be part of the DO-acracy!

Projects to plug into include and are not limited to:

~Gardening

~Kitchen Crew making a stone soup for our community dinner!

~Sign-making for the Zero Waste Station

~Carpentry skills wanted for a variety of projects

~Greenhouse build-out

~Planting seeds and fruit trees!

~Greywater install

~Shower plumbing

...AND MORE!

The PLACE is what it is because of all the loving work that is donated from people like you! Please come down with your enthusiasm and find a project that fits your interests and skill-sets. Learn, lead, play.

Souper Sunday

Weekly Community Potluck 6-8 pm

Following the Get'ER Done Day in conjunction with the
San Pablo clean up day, we will be hosting a Potluck
Dinner from 6pm-8pm followed by an Open Mic night. Please bring a

vegetarian dish, or an ingredient to add to the stone soup!

SUNDAY EVENING OPEN MIC

Weekly, 8 pm-Midnight
Oh Yes a very very wide open open mic is starting this week. The PLACE
for Sustainable Living in Oakland is hosting this vibrant gathering every
Sunday Night from 8pm - Midnight. This means jam sessions, poetry,
performance of all types, shapes, sounds and forms are welcome.
All Ages. 4 input PA System on the premises Your Host will be SEE -
Cristian Ellauri

4. The Stitch Kitchen is a teacher's co-op offering sewing machine sharing, classes, mentorship, and open sewing labs. Nan Eastep of B. Spoke Tailor is offering Monday Night open sewing labs from 6-9 pm throughout the summer. RSVP nan@bspoketailor.com by 3 pm of the same day to reserve a spot!

5. Spokeland Bike Co-Op Updates and Hours

We are an education-based bicycle cooperative aimed at making bikes accessible to EVERYONE. Hours: Sunday, open 12-5 hours.Tuesday open regular hours 6-9pm.

Special events: We are having our second monthly trans/women-only bike day on Saturday, the 6th of August, from 2-6:30.

6. Community Announcements!

-Materials needed for a children's vegetable garden project at St. Columba Church @ 6401 San Pablo Ave. Oakland

The Kung-Fu Kitchen, a summer program at St. Columba is teaching community building and self-reliance is looking for materials to start their garden! The kids are all very excited to get their hands dirty and learn how to be self-sufficient gardeners. We're planning to build a raised garden bed, a compost bin, and a small green house. If you can spare any of the following items, please get in touch with Jeremiah by email: jeremiahpaulg@gmail.com or phone: 707.304.9743 lumber, bamboo, topsoil, edible plant starts, worms, and greenhouse-building materials.

-Bee-keeping workshop series to begin August 6th!

Want to learn how to raise bees, learn more about bee culture and how to maintain a hive? The PLACE for Sustainable Living is hosting a series of workshops beginning August 6th with Rokas the Beekeeper! We're taking interest now for this monthly series to decide whether we need 1 or 2 classes a month. Please email placeforsustainableliving@gmail.com to let us know that you'd like to be contacted with more details!

-Oakleyville Neighborhood Honey for sale!

We've harvested 50 pounds of honey from our rooftop hives! Please drop by on Sundays to get your honey that will help your allergies and support the local economy! So sweet!

With Gratitude,
Ashley Weiss
Activation Artist

A PLACE for Sustainable Living

aplaceforsustainableliving.org

www.facebook.com/oakleyville

twitter.com/oakleyville

1121 64th Street

Oakland, CA 94608

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe from our email list:

http://groups.google.com/group/sustainablecenter/subscribe

Urbanism and Iconography

Hey all,

I wanted to post my notes from the precedent study presentations, in case anyone wanted to use them. Find your city!

I've always been fascinated by the intersection of the physical and temporal, and this summer program has me thinking a lot about iconography. Our built environment is full of these little symbols, to which we become accustomed and for which we sometimes even find an affinity. A great example are the "Ampelmännchen" in East Berlin, which became a serious source of cultural-historical pride after the reunification of Germany, and remain in use in East Berlin today.

Here's a great blog post about the simple iconography of way-finding symbols in transit systems around the world. These universal images can transcend the boundaries of language and culture.

"Greening the Ghetto"

I wanted to share this TED Talk that I came across over the weekend. Majora Carter shares the story of her activism work in the South Bronx and demonstrates how powerful sustainable planning can be in attempting to correct environmental injustices.

This talk reminded me a lot of the Planner's Triangle that Campbell discusses in his "Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?" article, where as planners, we must address the conflict of three competing interests: Economic Development, Social Justice/Equity, and Environmental Protection. I found Carter's story to be an inspiring example of what planning can accomplish when a balance of the three is found. Certainly, her work really brought to life a lot of issues of public heath and environmental equity for me and it's amazing to see how sustainability and planning can go hand in hand to enormously improve urban spaces for the people who live in them.

Map Your Solar Potential - NYC Solar Map

The New York City Solar America City Partnership, led by Sustainable CUNY, is proud to welcome you to the New York City Solar Map. This map shows existing solar PV and solar thermal installations in NYC and gives an estimate of solar PV potential for every rooftop in the five boroughs.

The New York City Solar Map is a tool that all New Yorkers can use learn about the potential for solar on their buildings and across the city. It also provides practical information and steps for installing solar. Here is the related NY Times article.

These are the kinds of open source tools cities should fund for technological innovation to make sustainable endeavors as easy as possible for residents. Check it out!

Image from NYT.

Its all in the Packaging: Move over Whole Foods.

Austin, TX will boast a zero waste package-free grocery store cleverly named in.gredients in 2011. Creative business models like this are an excellent way for businesses to help communities realize their specific climate action plan goals. Berkeley Bowl what do you think??? Watch the video for Austin's new grocery store below.

Credits: Image and video from www.in.gredients.com

Documentary Recommendation: Are you sustainability?

I highly recommend Tom Shadyac's recent documentary. The truth of who we are is that we are because we belong!!

Credits: Image of Delta from __http://www.acadia.org/acadia2008/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/060_001.jpg___. Video from Youtube

Letting go of a bright idea? Light Bulb Debates

It seems some politicians in Washington are seeking to make it difficult for local municipalities to enforce efficiency standards for lightbulbs. Read the article here...

Credits: Image of lightbulb from Science Photo Library.

Understanding the True Cost of Gasoline

Credits: Image of Guzzler from Nicholson. Video of The Price of Gas from Youtube.

Planning Games

With the success of SimCity and the omnipresence of virtual technologies,

it is interesting to showcase the original game cover from 1989.

As we start [IN]City and meet others in the program, one common question that comes up is, "how did you get interested in city planning?" For me, it always comes back to my days sitting on the computer building multitudes of cities on none other than good ole' SimCity. I assume probably most of you have played it a few times.

Because of that game, wherever I traveled I tried to come back and build. It was a game that could last minutes until I crushed a city with aliens or tornadoes, or weeks as I slowly built up its wealth and population on the slowest time setting.

But back then, it was never about city planning. I never really even knew what city planning was until college. But as our world becomes more digital, computer games powerful enough to model traffic flows, wealth shifts, and demographic trends like SimCity (4 I think is the latest one?) become valuable tools to teach and inspire generations of planners to come.

While these types of games are extremely valuable, they could also constrain thinking, which is what I've been thinking about lately too. In SimCity, although you could potentially start by doing anything, the best methods were to begin with plotting gridded zones of residential, commercial, and industrial. Then, you had to make sure they were all connected using roads. Mass transit on the scale of trains and subways really didn't become a factor until later on when it became affordable. The game, as advanced, inspiring, and educational as it was, really forced you to look at developing cities in only a few ways.

So, what could be the role of these games for the future? Will they continue to just be entertainment and only inspirational here and there, or could they become powerful enough to teach a higher level of planning early on? Also, how did the rest of you get interested in city planning?

Image from weblogs.asp.net

Another One Rides the Bus

Right now I'm sitting at Peet's Coffee & Tea at Telegraph and Dwight. It's 5:00 on a Friday. Rush hour. Looking out the window, I see two buses go through the intersection almost simultaneously, the 1 and the 1R. One is half full, and the other is nearly empty. Cars are backed up Dwight as far as the eye can see. And I ask myself a question I've wondered a thousand times.

Why don't more people ride the bus?

Personally, I like riding the bus. While trains are faster for certain kinds of trips, they don't offer the same kind of experience the bus offers. Trains are boring to me. They're either underground or way above ground, and I like the surface experience the bus offers. And yes, I realize that not everyone likes that experience. Buses have a reputation for attracting "the crazies." But I think you get crazy people on trains too, so I think that stigma is unjustified. And it's more than made up for by putting you in direct contact with the life of the city. I took the F bus across the Bay Bridge last night, and it was spectacular. Granted, I'd never been across the Bay Bridge before, but I don't think anyone could ignore the urban beauty of the San Francisco skyline at dusk, no matter how many times they see it. I wouldn't have been able to fully admire this view if I was driving a car, and I wouldn't have seen it at all if I had taken the train.

Buses are also cheaper. They're cheaper to build, they're cheaper to buy, and they're cheaper to ride. They're more expensive to operate on a year-by-year basis than light and heavy rail trains, but the enormous up-front investment required to build a rail system makes a comprehensive bus system by far the more sensible choice. I'm going to talk about the debate between bus and light rail in another post, but suffice it to say that expanding bus service makes more sense than building a light rail system when your resources are limited because you don't have to build new infrastructure: the roads are already there.

So, again, why don't people ride the bus? It's an hour later here at Dwight and Telegraph, and I've seen a lot of people. Most were walking, many were in cars, some were on bicycles, and a few were on scooters and skateboards. Dozens of buses have gone by in this hour. They were definitely in use, but none of them were standing room only. People obviously need to get places at 6:00 on a Friday afternoon, and it's their prerogative to choose how to get where they need to go. I just wish more people would see what I see when I look at the bus.

Credits: Image of Buses from SF Gate, Image of San Francisco Bay Bridge from Pulsar Wallpaper.

Sweet TED Talk: Building a Park in the Sky

I really enjoyed this talk.

- jo-z

Is Money Enough of a Mandate?

Image of the Wuhan Ring Road from the New York Times.

Although much of the Western world is still recovering from its easy debt habit and the building boom of the mid-aughts, China is in the middle of an urban boom, which includes ambitious megacity projects to link cities and brand new cities with plenty of shiny new buildings, but few residents.

This article from yesterday's New York Times takes a closer look at what appears to be a precarious debt scenario:

As municipal projects play out across China, spending on so-called fixed-asset investment — a crucial measure of building that is heavily weighted toward government and real estate projects — is now equal to nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It is a ratio that no other large nation has approached in modern times.

Even Japan, at the peak of its building boom in the 1980s, reached only about 35 percent, and the figure has hovered around 20 percent for decades in the United States.

While this article touches upon many interesting questions, including how swiftly the Chinese government can turn a project from a sketch into a major roadway, I'm most concerned with the question of money. Many times, developments in both the U.S. and China happen because the money is available. Should we build things just because the money is there?

As an aside, China is also building these projects when it may soon face the 4-2-1 demographic timebomb, where the one child policy has lead to families with an inverted pyramid of four grandparents and two parents, all on the shoulders of one child.

Thinking about Zotero

Become a Zotero Person?

Putting together a bibliography at the end-phase of writing a paper was always a hassle, so I was delighted to start using EndNote years ago. I was even happier with Zotero, because it is free and works on multiple operating systems--anywhere that Firefox can run, Zotero can be installed as a plug-in to Firefox.

For those who don't like using Firefox, the good news is that the Zotero developers are hashing out a stand-alone program that can work with Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. At this point Zotero standalone is in "alpha" phase, meaning that it is still being tested for bugs. I have found that it works fine, but use at your own peril.

The other thing that I like is that Zotero provides some free disk space so that you can back up your bibliographic database to "the cloud." I recently reformatted my hard drive. When I reinstalled the OS, the apps, and the Zotero plugin, I could just sync my local database with the one stored at my online Zotero account.

Zotero and EndNote exemplify one of the useful traits of databases: each reference is a record with multiple fields including the author's last and first names; year of publication; title; publisher; ISBN; and comments. Output from these DBs can be formatted in many different ways corresponding with different bibliographic styles: Chicago, MLA, American Psychological Association, etc.

You can also add comments to each record, which will help you in the future. You are likely to refer to favorite publications repeatedly over time, so it is worth investing in a personal database of key references.