|
|
Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
|
April 2009
|
|
|
The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.
-- Former Wisconsin governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise
Greetings,
Welcome to the April 2009 Earth Day edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
In September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. On April 22, 1970, Earth Day marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated.
A full-page advertisement in the January 18, 1970 Sunday New York Times helped spread the word to a wider audience. The advertisement read, "Earth Day is a commitment to make life better, not just bigger and faster; to provide real rather than rhetorical solutions. It is a day to re-examine the ethic of individual progress at mankind's expense. It is a day to challenge the corporate and governmental leaders who promise change, but who shortchange the necessary programs. It is a day for looking beyond tomorrow. April 22 seeks a future worth living. April 22 seeks a future."
Nearly 40 years have passed since the first Earth Day in
1970. Nelson's insights and
observations remain chillingly astute.
On prioritization. In the weeks leading up to Earth Day, Nelson began calling for a campaign to elect an "Ecology Congress". To clean up pollution would require an investment of twenty-five billion dollars a year or more, he said on CBS Television's "Face the Nation." "No administration has understood the size of the issue," he said. "It is much more important than space, weapons systems, or the money we're wasting in Vietnam." When a Yale University student challenged him on how he would cut the space program to pay for the cleanup, Nelson said, "I wouldn't revise the space program. I'd terminate it. "The moon is going to be there for a long time. It will be just as dead 30 years from now as it is today. The only purpose of getting to the moon that I know of is to see what this country will look like if we don't stop doing what we're doing."
On transportation. On April 21, 1970, Nelson told the United Auto Workers convention in Atlantic City that the automobile was becoming the symbol of the environmental crisis. "The heart of the problem is the internal combustion engine, which has powered America into unparalleled affluence, but now may drive it to unprecedented environmental disaster," Nelson said. UAW President Walter Reuther had told his members the day before that "the auto industry is one of the worst culprits and it has failed to meet its public responsibility," and called for the industry to join government in developing a modern mass transportation system. The convention later passed a resolution declaring that the UAW would raise the pollution issue in its contract negotiations, since the workers had a stake in helping society solve the problem, and in keeping their own jobs in the face of threats that polluting internal combustion engines would be banned.
On population. At a Milwaukee teach-in, Nelson declared, "By any standard, the United States is overpopulated now. "If the population of the world goes from three billion to seven billion in the next thirty-five years, it will be impossible to maintain a quality environment in this country or any country in the world."
On environmental justice. In his speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the eve of Earth Day, Nelson made it clear he saw the movement as broadly focused. "Our goal is not to forget about the worst environments in America - in the ghettos, in Appalachia and elsewhere," he said. "Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures - an environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war. Our goal is a decent environment in its deepest and broadest sense."
On the depth of the commitment needed. During the first 1970 Earth Day ceremonies at the University of Wisconsin, Nelson said, "The battle to restore a proper relationship between man and his environment, between man and other living creatures, will require a long, sustained, political, moral, ethical and financial commitment far beyond any commitment ever made by any society in the history of man. Are we able? Yes. Are we willing? That's the unanswered question."
Forty years later the question remains.
As we build, so shall we live.
Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders
Oakland, California, April 2009
ecocitybuilders.org Link to archived html version if you are having trouble with email display.
|
The
Ecozoic Era refers to a vision, first promoted by cosmologist Thomas
Berry, of an emerging epoch when humanity lives in a mutually enriching
relationship with the larger community of life on Earth.
Will
we be able to make the transition in time to retain a biosphere healthy
enough to regenerate living systems now under extreme stress? Our role in exploring ecocities is to clarify a vision of cities that can. And then go out and build them. There is
no way to be certain we will succeed, but our position is that there's no time to just sit
around and wonder about it: now is time for action.
Thank
you for all that you are doing to help accelerate progress toward a
civilization in balance with living systems.
Maybe one day all cities
will be ecocities.
|
|
Cycling in Hanoi: Can the Past Become the Future?
by Debra Efroymso
Published on Bicycle Fixation
Whenever I get back to Hanoi, where I lived for four years in the mid-90s, I go to visit a friend with Parkinsons. I used to cycle there--heck, I used to cycle everywhere. It's a long ride down a street with no traffic signals--a street I used to race on at night sometimes when I lived in Hanoi, just for exercise and good fun. My one-speed didn't go very fast, so it was OK that my brakes didn't work so well.
Hanoi, Vietnam
My friend is retired from the Ministry of Health, where I got to know him. He used to ride a small rusty old bike, one that made people laugh even before bicycles were concerned "outdated" and "old-fashioned" in Hanoi. When all his friends and colleagues switched to motorbikes, they asked him why he continued to cycle. "I always cycled, I still cycle," he would reply, a little confused as to why they asked.
One of the many charms of Hanoi back then was that cycling was such a common and accepted form of transport. There were few cars or buses, with the traffic about half bicycles and half motorbikes. We cycled in the intense heat, riding as slowly as we could without falling over, and stopping under trees near stoplights. We cycled in the rain, and arrived soaking wet, if we didn't want to stifle under the plastic raincoats for sale everywhere.
A good friend of mine worked for the United Nations, her office near my home. On our frequent lunch dates, I would pick her up on my bike, and she would break into arias as I rode her over the many potholes. I teased her that the UN wasn't paying her enough. The arias pretty much stopped when, to our surprise, we discovered that her riding sidesaddle was perfectly safe and a lot more comfortable.
One day a young woman I had just met invited me to her home in the village. I didn't bother asking her how far it was, and we ended up pedaling for about two hours to get there. It would never have occurred to her to tell me; she took it for granted that everyone, back then, was fit enough that riding for a couple hours could only be a pleasure. And it was. Her parents took me to the pagoda, fed me lunch, and after she dropped me at home, I never saw the woman again.
My bicycle, a Chinese Forever, began to feel like a part of my body, another limb. It wasn't quite as ugly or rusty as my doctor friend's, but I never bothered buying a proper lock for it, as it was not susceptible to being stolen. The brakes didn't work in the rain, so I dragged my sandal on the ground to stop. Every few days I would get the tires pumped on our street corner by a lovely old man with a long white beard; another man on the same corner regularly fixed it for me. He still gives me a friendly greeting when I walk or ride by. I would leave my bike with him and walk off and forget about it, and hours later would receive a scolding as well as a functional bike. Back then, every street corner had men pumping and fixing bikes, so my complete lack of knowledge of bike maintenance wasn't a problem.
On weekends, I would ride far out of town. Once a young Vietnamese female friend joined me, complaining of a cough. I suggested we not go far, and she assured me she would tell me when she got tired. Three hours later, we found the perfect picnic spot, a grove of bamboo trees, and stopped there to enjoy our picnic lunch. I slept great that night; she assured me the next day that she hadn't felt the least bit tired.
Back in 1994, there were almost no traffic lights in the city. People simply slowed down and wove through each other. We weren't individuals on bikes; we were drops of water, an undifferentiated part of a collective body. Children in particular would sail carelessly from a side street onto the main road, and everyone would gently weave to make space for them. Crossing the street meant simply plunging in, and allowing everyone to move around you: parting the waves, as it were. There was a beauty to it that can never be replicated in modern traffic systems.
Over the years, things changed. The government relaxed the rules on imports of motorbikes, and motorbikes flooded the city. Several months ago, Vietnam joined the WTO, and now cars are pouring in. The government, scrambling to make space for all the cars, is considering expanding car parking. It already banned cyclos (cycle rickshaws) from most streets years ago. People park their cars and motorbikes on the sidewalks. The corner bike pumpers and repairers are disappearing. A few fancy modern bicycles have appeared, and the government has painted cycle lanes on some streets that are usually blocked by parked cars or motorbikes or other obstructions. Some people still cycle, but it is increasingly dangerous and unpleasant in the new traffic mix, and with the fumes from all the motorized vehicles.
So when I went to see my retired friend in January, I took a motorcycle taxithe kind where you sit behind the driver on his motorbike. Only in small cities do they have a similar form of taxia bicycle with a padded seat on the back for the paying passenger.
My friend is doing much better. He almost died a year ago, and I had placed his photo on my altar. He was eating through a nose tube for months, completely paralyzed, unable to talk. This time he was back in a wheelchair, feeding himself a tangerine, and able to speak full sentences at a time. His wife, the incarnation of patience and loving virtue, explained to me the incredible amount of work required to rehabilitate him. "When I took him to the doctor the last time, the doctor was amazed," she said. "He was only supposed to continue to deteriorate. We discussed it, and he said it's in part because my husband cycled everywhere that he is so strong and able to bounce back." She went on to inform me that various of her husband's friends and colleagues, who had been so healthy when her husband first became ill, are now dead of a variety of diseases--cancer, heart attack, stroke.
I know cycling is no guarantee of a long life, or of good health. But talking to this elderly couple, I had to wonder whether they are a dying breed--or a glimpse of the future. The air in Hanoi is so filthy now, if I walk too much I get queasy by the end of the day. The government has succeeded in making all the motorcyclists wear helmets, so the cracked head syndrome is apparently declining, but what of all the other consequences of the frequent accidents? What of all the people on foot or bicycle?
Tearing down buildings to build parking for the ever-growing number of cars, and allowing motorcycles and cars to take over the sidewalks, can't last forever. Someday people will notice that they aren't getting anywhere any faster on motorbike than they used to on bicycle. Someone who remembers will miss the days of cooperation and friendliness on the streets, where people would cycle side by side, chatting, and where students would ride beside foreigners for miles for a chance to practice their English.
It might take peak oil and rising oil prices, or an epidemic of respiratory diseases, or the natural longing for what we are losing: the noodle stands on the sidewalks; the elderly practicing tai chi in the parks and by the lakes; youth playing badminton in the middle of quiet streets; the wedding parties in velvet or silk ao dai carrying red boxes of gifts, traveling in a line of cyclos; the groups of kids riding two to a bike, laughing and swerving through the streets.
Surely someone will question whether modernity always means positive changes, whether the newly emerging KFCs are really better than the traditional food stalls, whether noise and pollution really are better than streets full of cyclists and air we could breathe, whether closing down fresh markets to make room for grocery stores is really an improvement. Whether we can't again see the days when doctors and students, foreigners and businessmen, cycled through the unpolluted streets of the capital, past people gathering at sidewalk stands, buying their flowers and vegetables from cycle carts and from people carrying their wares on shoulder poles.
Not out of nostalgia, but because they realize that some things in the past are well worth saving, and sometimes the only way to move forward is to take a few steps back. Surely someone will wonder whether we can't sometimes just say "No" to what the corporations are trying to sell us, and take away from us; whether we can't voluntarily turn back the clock--or rather, turn it ahead, to a more human future.
Debra Eforymson is Regional Director of HealthBridge. HealthBridge is pleased to announce the launching of a new alliance, the South-to-South Ecocity Alliance (SSEA). Consisting of partner organizations in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia, SSEA was created to enhance south-to-south sharing and cooperation, in the pursuit of sound urban design for better health, gender equity, poverty reduction, and a cleaner environment.
|
Wenchuan as Eco-City
by Emanuel Pastreich and John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
A devastating earthquake leveled the Chinese town of Wenchuan, leaving in its wake over 60,000 dead and five million homeless throughout Sichuan Province. It will take years to heal the damage of this tragedy. Nevertheless, even as aid organizations and local government scramble to erect temporary housing and supply drinking water, it is important to step back and consider how the international community can properly contribute long after the last rescue crew has left.
First of all, today's China is a very different place than the country that suffered a major earthquake 30 years ago. In 1976, China was largely closed to the world, despite a rapprochement with the United States. As Wenran Jiang notes, China has opened itself up to the world, accepting international rescue and medical teams to an unprecedented degree. "But for a tectonic shift to occur in the world's perception of China as a new kind of superpower," he writes, "Beijing needs to do more than demonstrate that its crisis management is better than Burma's or that post-earthquake Sichuan is no post-Katrina New Orleans."
One way for China to prove that it is a new kind of superpower is to do something that goes beyond simply rebuilding Wenchuan. It can make a virtue out of necessity and, with outside assistance, leapfrog over existing technologies to create a new kind of city.
Such a transformation in the face of adversity is not unique. For instance, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 killed a similar number of people. That tragedy led to the development of the science of seismology. King Joseph of Portugal rebuilt Lisbon as a grand city boasting the first buildings with earthquake-resistant designs. Lisbon's Pombaline district from that era of regeneration remains a tourist attraction today.
China can do Portugal one better. With international help, it can rebuild Wenchuan as an eco-city of energy efficiency and Green common sense that can inspire the world - a Gaviotas for the 21st century. Such an eco-city can be a model of sustainable development that points beyond the contradictions of economic growth based on energy consumption. Wenchuan could draw admirers just as Curitiba in Brazil does for its excellent public transportation and environmental urban planning. Such a tribute to the earthquake's victims, by implementing solutions that can save the planet, would be more fitting than any plaque or monument. China can transform not only how it approaches the environment but, because of how important China is to the global picture, how the world deals with climate change.
The recreation of Wengchuan as an eco-city could rely on an already extensive regional network of environmental cooperation. Korea signed environmental cooperation agreements with both China and Japan in 1993. The Sino-Japan Friendship Centre for Environmental Protection has been around for more than a decade. In particular, Japan has been working with China to control the latter's air pollution. Japanese cities, too, have established sister city relations with their Chinese counterparts, which has served as a conduit for transferring technology and know-how. When Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited Japan in early May, his tour of a state-of-the-art recycling plant prompted a request for cutting-edge Japanese technology to address China's environmental problems.
Wenchuan could raise regional cooperation to the next level. Japanese technology, Korean funding, and the support of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia could all play important roles. Taiwan, too, could earmark special funds as part of a newly unfolding economic relationship with the mainland.
But Wenchuan should not simply be a showcase. It must be sustainable and replicable. Much as Habitat for Humanity builds affordable housing for the poor around the world, the Wenchuan model must be workable not only where there are blank slates but also in existing cities. To deal effectively and honestly with the challenges of pollution, climate change, and energy inefficiency, we must focus our efforts on the neglected regions of the world where the struggle for economic growth trumps all other concerns. Using hybrid automobiles in wealthy countries or installing more efficient refrigerators, while necessary, is not nearly enough. Funding from wealthy countries must help cities like Wenchuan meet the new global standards for reducing carbon emissions.
If the Cold War was about the threat of nuclear war and massive ideological conflict, the environmental struggle today is about regaining harmony between nature and human development. President John F. Kennedy asserted his solidarity with the people of Berlin when he said in 1961, "Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner' [I am a citizen of Berlin] All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'"
In the spirit of the new age of environmental, let us update Kennedy's famous words. Let us say today "Wo shi Wenchuan de Shimin" (I am a citizen of Wenchuan). In that spirit of compassion, let us rebuild Wenchuan, the victim of an act of nature, with an eye toward rebuilding all of our cities, the victims of our blind embrace of unsustainable growth.
Emanuel Pastreich is the director of the Asia Institute at the SolBridge School of Business in Daejeon, South Korea. He is a senior fellow at the US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute (CPRI), a founding member of the Daejeon Ecology Forum, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) at the Institute for Policy Studies (www.ips-dc.org).
|
|
Ecocity World Summit 2009
Istanbul Turkey, December 13-15
http://www.ecocity2009.com
Organized by Yildiz Technical University Faculty Of Architecture, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and
Parantez International in Istanbul
CONGRESS ORGANIZATIONADVISORY BOARD
Mr. Richard Register, Ecocity Builders, USA
Prof. Dr. Huseyin Cengiz, Yıldız Technical University, Turkey
Prof. Dr. Semra Atabay, Yıldız Technical University, Turkey
Mr. Paul Downtown, Ecopolis Architects, Australia
Mr. Rusong Wang, Ecological Society of China
Ms. Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders, USA
Dr. Zeynep Kaçmaz OZTURK, Eko Şehir, Turkey
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITEE
Prof. Dr. Huseyin CENGİZ - Chair
Prof. Dr. Semra ATABAY
Dr. Zeynep Kaçmaz OZTURK
CONGRESS ADMINISTRATION
Dr. Zeynep K. OZTURK / Administrator
Ass. Prof. Dr. Yigit EVREN
Ass. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Doruk OZUGUL
Ass. Prof. Dr. Elif Ornek OZDEN
Dr. Aysegul OZBAKIR
|
Israel on Tel Aviv's 100th Anniversary
by Richard Register, President, Ecocity Builders
I usually travel to distant places and return with impressions intact, themes in mind. Huaibei, China, for instance: the Coal City, tilting under the waves into its own collapsing mines as a new lake expands where the suburbs and farms on its southeast fringe used to be, and down - literally - it goes toward resource exhaustion by 2012. No more coal after that. The theme there had to do with an energy town's opportunity to assume leadership as an energy-conserving-by-design city of the future. Just in time for some lessons about the ever-spreading world "downturn."
But nothing so straightforward about this trip to Tel Aviv, the middle of the Negev Desert and Jerusalem. So let's face it, things weren't simple enough to organize themselves for me, much less for me trying to organize them for you. All said and done looks like I'll have to stick with random notes.
Girl running in Levinsky Park near the New Central Bus Station
Beautiful city
Patrick Geddes, famous leader among the theorists and builders of the Garden City movement of the early 20th century, made a plan for Tel Aviv in the 1920s. I was amazed at many beautiful tree lined streets where cars were definitely second-class citizens among the strolling people and drifting bicycles. I wasn't exactly prejudiced against the place before coming. I just hadn't thought about it much until a surprise invitation came in to speak there as part of their Centennial Conference on Urban Sustainability. Then as environmentalist/journalist Jesse Fox took me on a bicycle tour of Tel Aviv and the ancient small town of Yafo attached to Tel Aviv's southern edge I couldn't help saying to myself, "I really like this place. In fact, I like it a lot!"
Apartments with balcony and roof gardens
Bauhaus style residential apartments three to eight or nine stories with rounded balconies, some with glass window corners, many hovering over open space entries on tall posts, the idea being to create shade in the hot Mediterranean climate and cool the city. Seemed to be working admirably. In many of these spaces shade tolerant gardens were growing, though many had been commandeered by parked cars.
Pedestrian street and playground
Shady streets lined with fruit stands and markets, cafes, entrances to professional offices, an occasional bike rental shop, lots of housing upstairs. I've never seen a city with so many solar hot water set ups on the roofs and so many rooftop gardens at the same time. Very busy up there. On ground level, between slow moving fairly sparse traffic, much of it bus traffic, down the middle of many of the streets were very wide foot and bicycle paths, occasional playgrounds and, being the 100th Anniversary party of the City, quite a few historic photos blown up and proudly displayed in sepia tones in large metal and glass poster frames: the early pioneers.
My bicycle guide and journalist Jesse Fox on the Tel Aviv beach promenade
Early Pioneers
At 4,000 years old, Jaffa, now more commonly known as Yafo, is the oldest port in the world, they say. It was built during King Solomon's time. The materials used for making the Temple in Jerusalem were shipped in through this harbor. Thousands of years later sixty-six Jewish families arrived here from hell in 1909 (it only got worse in the 1930s and 1940s). Fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe they landed on a sandy desert beach just north of the old town of Yafo. Some of the pioneers said to their leaders, "You must be crazy. How are we supposed to live here - sand, harsh sun and no water, that is without salt?" Some water was draining in off the sloping landscape to stagnate in marshes behind the beach sand dunes.
They drained the swamps toward the sea, freshened the water they did have thereby, and went to work building the city. Patrick Geddes showed up in the 1920s a little more than a decade later with his proclivities for biology and city planning and helped layout the fast growing surprisingly green Tel Aviv. The name, by the way, comes from "tel," which is what archeologists call a hill made of layers of old civilizations one over the other, and "aviv" for spring, which wasn't really there, but created in the way just mentioned. That is if it was a water "spring," which was said by one of our conference's lecturers. On the Internet it looks more likely to be the season "spring." In the Sheraton Moriah there were old pictures of the early settlers and builders - working, taking the train, circle dancing at the shipyards, walking between the modern Bauhaus buildings all freshly painted white among the fast growing new trees. Outside the hotel, one day when I was there, hundreds of today's Israelis were dancing the same dances on the swirling patterned pavement between the line of hotels and the beach and Mediterranean.
"read on"
|
Colin Grant Weighs In
Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and is contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging.
Can EcoCities 09 Really Change the World?
This time last year I was presenting at the Ecocities conference in San Francisco. In December this year, we will be re-assembling in Istanbul. In just one year we have seen some dramatic changes that emphasize the "unsustainability" of our current systems and our proximity to "Peak Everything".
The 2008 EcoCitiy conference was one of the best I have attended. However, I would like to suggest that we need to challenge ourselves to go much further at this conference than has happened at previous sustainability conferences. Time is clearly running out at an ever-increasing rate.
Here are some suggestions.
1. Macro targets should be set well before the conference that can frame our discussions and allow us to compare progress towards defined goals.
In an earlier article in this series, I suggested that a real Eco City would, for instance, generate its own power from renewable sources, grow most of its food and produce near zero waste. It would have wonderful transportation options that resulted in most journeys being self-propelled or by transit and would have a range of affordable housing options near to transit, school and employment.
For instance, Al Gore has called for 100% renewable energy by 2018, and leading communities such as Gussing in Austria and Samso in Denmark are already there, being net exporters of renewable energy already. Sweden has set a national goal of being free from oil by 2020 and Overturnea is there already. Havana, Cuba successfully negotiated its early Peak Oil experience by becoming virtually self-sufficient in food. Curitiba, Brazil, Copenhagen Denmark and Amsterdam Holland show us how to make cities close to independent of the motor car.
2. Mathis Wackernagel's Eco Footprint Network should show us which communities worldwide are currently living within a one-plant footprint or are closest to this essential goal.
The internet is full of discussions and ranking systems for "green" cities but there is precious little science involved. The Eco Footprint approach is a notable exception, however Mathis' presentation at Eco City 2008 did not show us which cities or communities, (if any), have reached the "one planet" level of resource consumption and waste production that all must reach soon if life on Earth as we know it is to continue. A scale that ranked the leading communities such as Overturnea, Vaxjo, Gussing, Freiburg, Curitiba and others would be very helpful, and comparing these to leading larger cities would also help to provide much needed clarity.
If this is too complex or costly, perhaps Richard Register could invite all cities participating to come armed with some basic facts that we can use to compare each other, such as % of renewable energy consumed; % waste recycled, % food produced within say 200km, % journeys that are self propelled or by transit, etc.
We need to get tangible, measureable and measured if we are to have any chance of living within the planet's limits again in time.
3. In addition to celebrating the successes, we need to admit where things haven't worked and share lessons learned.
Perhaps Peter Head of Arup who presented in 2008 should update us on the China Eco Cities projects, focusing on the lessons learned where things appear to have gone wrong so we can avoid similar disappointments in current and future efforts - we can't afford any more false starts or false dawns.
4. Imagine if, in Istanbul, we could get 100 mayors to sign up to a commitment to a set of Eco City goals and to pledge to invite every other mayor in the word to join them!
Hope to see you in Istanbul!
Colin
Link to more information about Colin Grant and his company, Visible Strategies, offering the world's most visually-engaging performance management and communications software, SEE-IT.
|
Car-Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
As summer approaches, it's time for most of us to think about our summer vacation-or perhaps summer weekends. Too often, it's easy to assume that we need a car on the vacation: both to get where we are going, and then for daily excursions and outings once we have arrived at our vacation destination.
But you and I know that we don't need a car to enjoy a great vacation. Walking, renting a bicycle, enjoying a boat trip or a train ride, or exploring a vacation area on a trolley are just a few ways to enjoy a vacation without a car. Even if you need to drive to your destination, you can find a place to stay within walking distance of a park, the beach, shops and restaurants, and public transportation. Many vacation areas offer bicycle rentals.
Here are a few possibilities for car-free outings or vacations:
Northeastern U.S.
Enjoy a weekend in northern New England on Amtrak's Downeaster. This route travels from Boston to Portland, ME, through New Hampshire and Maine, at surprisingly affordable prices. You can enjoy several one-day outings from either Boston or Portland.
During the summer, get off at Old Orchard Beach and walk to the beach.
Consider a visit to Wells, Maine. When you get off, look for the trolley and enjoy a ride to the beach, other nearby communities, and hotels and restaurants.
In New Hampshire, the Durham station is on the University of New Hampshire campus.
Portland's station is served by Portland Metro Bus #5. The Metro bus system serves most of Portland. If you like boat trips, Metro's Bus #8 (every day except Sunday) stops at the Casco Bay Lines terminal. There, you can choose from several scenic boat trips to outlying islands in Casco Bay.
For more information about the Downeaster, and possible trips in Maine and New Hampshire on this train, visit www.amtrakdowneaster.com.
"read on"
|
Ecocity design archive
Cooling shade in the streets: Richard Register, 1989 (right) Masdar, 2006 (below)  |
|
|
Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
|
Click here for more information and to register for classes
in the Sustainable Design Program at UC Berkeley Extension.
Go Green with Berkeley!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
