Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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Ecocity Builders
October 2009
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Welcome to the October 2009 edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
Ecocity World Summit 2009 is only two months away. As in our past conferences, Ecocity 2009's keynote speaker line-up will showcase some of the finest thinking and best practices around ecological city theory, design, planning and implementation. In addition to main session speakers, the concurrent paper presentations will introduce delegates to up and coming talent, new approaches and bold ecocity proposals.
Ecocity 2009 will launch a new session, The Ecocity Challenge, a special four-hour inquiry where conference participants will begin to define internationally accepted principles and metrics to evaluate the performance of ecocity projects worldwide. Joining the Challenge will be ecocity models from China and Singapore, Africa, Abu Dhabi, United States, Europe, and from Ecocity Builders and The World Bank.
Delegates will also enjoy the legendary delights of Istanbul and learn about the history of this cosmopolitan crossroads. Among other special events planned you'll be treated to a gala dinner on the beautiful Bosphorus and to several technical tours, including a bicycle tour led by the Istanbul Cyclists' Association.
A priority objective is to leverage Ecocity 2009 to influence the United Nations climate change conference concurrently convening in Copenhagen. To date, the UN series has not seriously looked at the form and function of the built environment as an engine of both climate change and climate solutions. If we are successful, we will influence COP15 towards a deeper discussion of the underlying problems and solutions of the planet's environmental crisis.
To the future,
Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders
Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series
ECOCITY MEDIA
Posts, projects and people
Ecocity World Summit 2009 Website
Register for the conference
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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.
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Tailpipes, Traffic and Climate Change
In the early 1960's, International Ecocity Conference Series Founder and President of NGO Ecocity Builders' Richard Register was living in Los Angeles when it was, as he says, "Hell on wheels, smog burning your throat and eyes and hundreds of 'excess deaths' a year from air pollution." Register has never been fond of cars, but he concedes that almost five decades later, despite millions more cars on the road, catalytic converters have done much to clean up the smog problem in LA. However, he still takes issue with car-centric cities. While no one would disagree that clearing the air of smog is a good thing, we must ask ourselves if slapping a filter on our tailpipes is enough to abate the other problems that come with lots of cars. Nothing we add to our tailpipe can alleviate traffic, prevent car accidents that kill 40 thousand people in the U.S. every year, make our communities more walkable, or stop climate change.
While owning a car has become a common aspiration in many developing countries, those Los Angeleans who daily spend two or more hours sitting in traffic on LA freeways may wonder why anyone would want to follow suit. According to Forbes.com, the annual delay per driver in the U.S. is in excess of 47 hours per year, creating delayed shipments and wasting more than 2.3 billion gallons of fuel each year. Moreover, according to the Texas Transportation Institute the cost of U.S. traffic delays is, conservatively, $63.1 billion a year, based on 2003 figures.
Yet the world drives on.
In Sao Paulo, nearly 1,000 cars are added to the streets each day. Traffic in Bangkok has gotten so bad that hundreds of women over the past few years have been forced to give birth in cars. The Royal Thai Traffic Police has trained 145 of its officers in basic midwifery. While some may admire the multi-tasking that's inherent in such a situation, perhaps it's time to think about creating a different kind of city.
As we approach the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen this December, we might consider stepping back - way back - out of our cities and looking in at what has happened to them. Could they not be better designed to meet humanity's needs and to avoid catastrophic climate change? Could they not afford us more time with family and friends and less time stuck in a metal box with wheels on a four-lane road?
Register believes the answer is yes. His solution? The EcoCity. Register first conceived of the idea several decades ago, calling it, "One stop shopping for all your solutions." According to Register, EcoCities could not only run on one tenth of the energy that cities currently do, but also could bring on the age of bicycle and rails while reducing car crashes and supporting solar and wind energy. EcoCities also hold the promise of reforestation and restoration of vast areas of green space and farmland recovered from urban sprawl.
Register is far from alone in this idea. A highly influential community of architects, planners, designers, policy makers, green businesses, political and nonprofit leaders, with the added participation of international experts and delegates will be convening at the Eighth Annual International EcoCity World Summit to present papers and ideas on the EcoCity and its role in the escape from dangerous climate change. Participants from Australia, the U.S., the U.K., Israel, France, Senegal, Egypt, Singapore, India, Nepal and more will join together in the discussion in Istanbul this December. In addition, more than 100 papers will be presented in concurrent sessions from more than 40 countries representing young emerging and pioneering talent from around the world.
For more information, go to: http://www.ecocity2009.com
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Colin Grant Weighs In
Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and is contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging. Colin is a Speaker at Ecocity 2009 in Istanbul.
(Bean) counting down to climate disaster (or Catch 2o2o)
Two weeks ago I was presenting at a conference in a region of North America that is part of the Western Climate Initiative, where collaborating States and Provinces have pledged to reduce their GHG emissions by one third by 2020.
Ambitious though this may seen to some, readers of this series of articles will be aware that the emerging scientific consensus is that this will be nowhere near enough and that the reality rather than politically based targets should be nearer 90% by 2020 (and that at least one city has already achieved this while increasing jobs, businesses, revenues and civic spirit). However, even the one third target looks in jeopardy in so many regions if we remain stuck in thinking from the last century or earlier.
Emissions from buildings represents 16% of the total GHG's of this region and schools represent the largest stock of buildings in the public domain. Now one would think it would be an absolute no-brainer as they say in North America to create a fund that would allow schools to carry out, at the very least, energy-efficiency retrofits so that they could stop leaking energy. Maybe a solar panel or two or even a Solviva solar green house, (see earlier article in this series on how to revolutionize food growth without fossil fuels), might appear once the calking of holes, improved wall and roof insulation and replacement of leaking windows had been completed. Imagine schools being living laboratories and best practice demonstration sites, imagine kids coming home saying, "Mom, Dad, look what we did at school, why aren't we doing that at home/at your work/everywhere!!!?" Maybe some of the Moms and Dads would even be employed doing the retrofit work? Maybe someone could name these "Green Jobs"? Catchy isn't it?
These schools would then be able to sell carbon credits relating to their energy savings, resulting in income that could be used to pay down any loan they took out to carry out the work, or better still, they would pay the loan back out of resulting energy savings and use the carbon credit income to make even more improvements, that generate more savings and hence more carbon credit income and so on in a wonderful virtuous circle of innovation, community engagement and learning.
But of course, this is far too simplistic thinking. The regional government involved is claiming recession-induced poverty, cutting funding in all directions (well not in the case of senior bureaucrat and politician pay, but that's another matter). Schools are finding it difficult to make even essential safety repairs, sometimes having to cut key programs like special needs teaching to meet the requirements of essential safe functioning of their aging buildings.
So why not use the private sector? There are numerous energy saving companies (ESCOs) that will happily carry out the energy saving work, making their profit from the energy bill savings that occur over, say, ten years as the improvements kick in. From year eleven the school would get the savings (and carbon credit sales).
Or why not involve citizens in helping to fund the energy saving retrofits, perhaps with a citizens energy bond? In the region in question, savings of 7% are typical from this type of work - where else are you getting this type of return right now? And these are only rates of return are likely to grow as energy prices climb back up in lock step with economic recovery and energy use, as carbon use becomes taxed or capped and traded and as Peak Oil bites hard in the near future.
And to cap this problem, the department running the schools will have to become carbon neutral by 2011 so more urgently needed educational budgets will be diverted to pay for carbon credits, rather than supplemented by selling them.
Well here is the reason why neither the public nor the private sector can help to create a virtuous circle of social, environmental and economic magic. Under current accounting regimes, ESCO or bonding would be classified as debt and this would reduce the region's credit standing.
So there you have it. All we would need to do to kick start the energy revolution in this region is to meet with the appropriate people in the region's accounting profession and make a new classification for this type of project that circumvented this problem. Doesn't seem too tricky given the endorsement of the climate change targets by the highest level of elected official in this region does it?
The good news is that the head of climate change action for this region told me that he is working hard on closing this loophole.
The bad news is so did his predecessor two years ago.
This type of red tape has too be slashed wherever it is stopping progress but the urgency just doesn't seem to be there in so many cases. How many sustainability conferences have you attended where the Einstein quote about not being able to solve our problems through the type of thinking that created them is PowerPointed up on the screen? Everyone nods and laughs - then, all too often, we go back to our day jobs and allow yesterday's thinking to hold back the tomorrow we so desperately need.
90% by 2020 or Catch 2o2o?
cgrant@visiblestrategies.com
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.
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Ecocity 2009 themes and questions to be explored through plenary and paper presentations
The Future of Cities
"What do cities do for humanity and to nature?"
"Can we run whole cities on renewable energy and maintain a good quality of life for everyone? (In the long run is there anything else to run them on?)
"Can we transform cities in time to solve these serious problems of the environment?"
"How can we prioritize and plan for the shift from unhealthy to ecologically healthy cities, towns and villages, and how should these models be crafted so that they can be adopted by both developing and developed countries?"
Land Use
"How do basic land use arrangements work for or against social and economic vitality, energy conservation, open space and nature, and for or against natural restoration and health, from the local to the global?"
"How can cities be reshaped to cover far less land area while increasing livability and energy efficiency?"
"What can governments do to regulate and govern the use of land without encroaching on individual rights?"
"How can nature be restored and celebrated inside cities as well as outside?"
"What is the relationship between population, wealth, and land use?"
Architecture/Design
"What is the difference between "green building" and arrangements of buildings that create healthy built environments for entire communities, including low-income residents?"
"What are examples of architectural and design features that larger buildings can adopt for different climate zones and building styles? "
"In an ecological city, how can architecture and design reflect the human scale within the taller and more compact built environment?"
"How do architects design with an understanding and relationship to their immediate surroundings, the natural environment, and the whole city structure?"
Transportation
"What forms of transportation best support the ecocity model?"
"What relationship does land use have to transportation?"
"How can cities start shifting subsidies over towards forms of transportation that fit the ecocity model?"
Energy
"What energy sources and technologies are going to be able to address the needs of the future without further damage to the environment and atmosphere?"
"How does the form and efficiency of the built environment correlate to energy and natural resource supply and demand?"
"What are the consequences of trying to maintain a fossil fuel based form of transportation and land use (private automobiles/sprawl) on another transport energy source, like biofuels? "
Future of Nature
"What is the state of the world's environment, on land and in the oceans and atmosphere?"
"How have cities, towns, and villages specifically contributed to environmental degradation?"
"How can the built environment be changed to help save the natural environment?"
Food
"Can the big agribusiness model be sustainable?"
"Can local and regional farms and organic farming be economically and ecologically sustainable and can they adequately supply the needs of the world's cities, towns and villages?"
"How does government subsidy and policy determine what kind of food is produced and how it is distributed, and how could that change in order to support the transition to more locally based food systems?"
Consumption and Population
"On a global scale, who is over-consuming natural resources and by how much?"
"How can we address problems of over consumption and overpopulation?"
"Is there a level of consumption that everyone could aspire to that would afford a good quality of life without destroying the biosphere?"
"How does the structure of the city, town and village relate to consumption of resources per capita?"
"If we built cities to run on a fraction of the energy and resources they do now, approximately how many people could the earth support?"
Business
"Is the corporate business model helping or hurting overall?"
"Should businesses be more global or more local in order to benefit the most people and the environment?"
"What role does government play in making sure businesses are protecting and serving the citizens and the environment as well as their own interests?"
"What efforts and models are available that demonstrate a shift from big business to locally owned and operated businesses supporting a local economy?"
Governance
"How are governments currently addressing the problems of climate change and its impact on citizens, the economy, the environment and the future?"
"How can government lead us from the Age of Oil into a new Ecological Era?"
"What governments are taking a leadership role in addressing the needs of the present and a future facing climate change, peak oil and other environmental, social and economic problems?"
"How can governments work together to address problems of climate change, over-consumption, population, social justice, biodiversity collapse and other serious problems facing humanity?"
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Ecocity World Summit 2009
Istanbul Turkey, December 13-15
Organized by Ecocity Builders and Parantez International
Program - Speakers
Invitation and Organization
Photos of Istanbul
ATTEND
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Ecocity 2009 Featured Speakers
Veysel Eroglu, Minister of Environment and Forests, TURKEY
Mr. Eroglu is Member of Parliament for Afyonkarahisar of the ruling AKP. He graduated in civil engineering from Istanbul Technical University, going on to an academic career at the same university until becoming general director of the Istanbul water board in 1994. Here he is remembered for successfully modernizing and cleaning up the city's water supply. He became head of the State Hydraulic Works (DSI) in 2003, where again he supervised a program of investment for renewal. In the past, Eroglu campaigned for the position of the mayor of Istanbul from AKP. He was elected to the parliament in 2007, becoming minister of environment and forestry, where, as part of his duties, he will be responsible for Turkey's strategy and approach to global warming.
Brent Toderian, Director of Planning, Vancouver, BC, CANADA
In 2006, Brent Toderian was appointed the City of Vancouver's Director of Cent Planning, succeeding celebrated Co-Directos Larry Beasley and Dr. Ann Mcafee. His broad mandate involves current planning, including the many projects related to the 2010 Winter Olympics, and visioning/CityPlans, including the new "EcoDensity" citywide initiative recently adopted by the City. EcoDensity is based on the premise that strategically located, sustainability designed density can reduce the City's ecological footprint while making Vancouver more sustainable, livable and affordable. Since arriving, Brent's been encouraging candid, city-wide dialogue around an evolving urbanism, with bold opportunities around sustainability, creativity and architectural risk taking. Vancouver Ecodensity: http://www.vancouverecodensity.ca
Beng Lee Ong, Director (Eco-city Project Office), Ministry of National Development, SINGAPORE
Mr Beng Lee Ong was appointed to the Singapore Administrative Service in 1990. In his current appointment as Director of the Eco-city Project Office in the Ministry of National Development, he helps to formulate policies and programs for the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, and oversees its smooth implementation in close partnership with the relevant Chinese authorities and Singapore agencies, and the joint venture company undertaking the development of the Eco-city. Mr Ong read Philosophy, Politics and Economics in Oxford University on an Overseas Merit Scholarship (Open) from 1985 to 1988, and attended the Programme for Management Development at Harvard Business School in 2001. Prior to his current appointment, he served in various Government agencies, including the Ministries of Trade and Industry, Home Affairs and Defense.
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ECOCITY MEDIA
Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Climate Change
At the G20, US President Obama said he would phase out fossil fuel subsidies as a way to combat climate change. Recent reports from the International Energy Agency and other institutions point out the scale of those largely hidden subsidies and how they contribute to global warming.
According to Steve Kretzman of the Institute for Policy Studies, on an annual basis, globally, there are at least $250 billion dollars in global fossil fuel subsides, and some people think that number is closer to $400 billion. Kretzman believes the discontinuation of such subsidies will be quite profound for climate change mitigation. He points to a study from OECD earlier this year that showed that if the $300 billion dollars in subsidies identified in the study were taken away, you would get a 10% - 12% reduction in global greenhouse gases.
Kretzman says that on the production side, a recent study shows $70 billion dollars going to the fossil fuel industry on an annual basis, while solar, wind, and energy efficiency get about $12 billion. That's a massive market distortion.
Not surprisingly, politicians from oil-producing states immediately began defending such payouts to the fossil fuel industry as "tax incentives," not subsidies. However, upon examining the massive infrastructure required for automobiles running on gas, there can be no denying both the fiscal and environmental cost of a society based on the conventional automobile. Below are some statistics for consideration:
From the 2008 BP Statistical Review of World Energy: Americans consumed 6.5 billion barrels of oil in 2008, or 22.5% of world oil consumption. China was second with 9.6%.
While some may argue that cleaner cars are coming down the pipe, according to the Umweltund Prognose-Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, a car causes more pollution before it's ever driven than in its entire lifetime of driving.
According to Runzheimer International, the environmental cost of one car breaks down as follows:
Extracting Raw Materials: Produces 26.5 tons of waste and 922 cubic meters of polluted air.
Transporting Raw Materials: Causes the release of 12 liters of crude oil in the ocean and 425 million cubic meters of polluted air.
Producing the Car: Produces 1.5 tons of waste and 74 million cubic meters of polluted air.
Driving the Car: Produces 18.4 kilos of abrasive waste and 1,016 million cubic meters of polluted air.
Disposing of the Car: Produces 102 million cubic meters of polluted air.
Paved surfaces present another hidden cost of the car-based system. Concrete or asphalt in roads and sidewalks create water pollution and require drilling, mining and transporting of gravel, cement and asphalt. Forty single-family dwellings require 40 times as much concrete in roads and sidewalks as a 40-unit apartment building on a single lot. Moreover, water, sewer, electrical, phone, cable and other services lie under the street and branch off into each lot, so sprawl housing uses much more of these materials.
Consider that 233,333 square yards of roads and sidewalks per household are required when housing density is three households per acre. However, only 7,000 square yards of roads and sidewalks per household are required when housing density is 100 households per acre. That's only 3% of what's required for the less densely built scenario - a huge difference in needed materials and resulting costs.
When you consider that citizens living in dense urban centers without a car are heavily subsidizing car users through taxes to pay for all of the required infrastructure, it becomes increasingly clear that such a market distortion bloats costs to the taxpayers and is taking a very large toll on the earth's atmosphere. Designing and building cities to be dense, pedestrian and bike-friendly locales with the necessary public transport for human mobility would seem the only way to adequately address climate change and the hidden subsidies of car-centric infrastructure.
Several city planning and policy experts will be addressing the issue of urban density in cities at the upcoming EcoCity World Summit in Istanbul this December. Presenters will include Richard Register of EcoCity Builders, Walter Hood (urbanist, landscape architect), Ken Yeang (bioclimatic design), David Hall (New Vista Ecocity), the World Bank Eco2Cities program, Global Footprint Network, Janet Larsen of Earth Policy Institute (representing Lester Brown's Plan B), and Brent Toderian, head of City Planning for City of Vancouver, Canada and author of the EcoDensity Initiative.
Author:
Stacey Meinzen
www.ClimateActionPlans.com
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Istanbul exhibit seeks to reveal city's soul
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The glories of Istanbul have arrived in Paris.
From white marble statues of Greek and Roman gods to gleaming medieval Christian icons to a huge red Ottoman tent, an exhibition devoted to Istanbul seeks to expand French awareness of the city's multicultural heritage in a country deeply skeptical of Turkey's European aspirations.
Some 300 works of art from museums in 14 countries in Europe, Turkey and Qatar cap two years of work to create the exhibit "From Byzantium to Istanbul" at the Grand Palais. Some of the pieces from Turkish museums have left their country for the first time.
Visitors look at historical pictures showing citizens from Istanbul at
the exhibition from Byzantium to Istanbul at the Grand Palais in Paris,
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The exhibition, opened earlier this month by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is
the centerpiece of the "Year of Turkey," a panoply of some 400 Turkish
cultural events spread over nine months to allow the French and others
to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.
Bathed in subdued red light, the exhibition takes the visitor through 8,000 years of history of the "city of a hundred names" known as Byzantium, then Constantinople and now Istanbul. It focuses on its role linking Europe and Asia as "one port for two continents."
The exhibition, opened this month by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is the centerpiece of the "Year of Turkey," a panoply of some 400 Turkish cultural events over nine months offering everyone a chance to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.
"(Istanbul) always has been a multicultural city, with many different languages, ethnicities, religions," said Nazan Olcer, director of the Sakip Sanci Museum in Istanbul and curator of the exhibition.
"I wanted to bring also this colorful face of the city to the exhibition. Maybe, you know, you cannot change all the prejudices with one exhibition only, but at least you can try to open a window to the visitor, to ask him to think differently," she told The Associated Press in an interview.
A visitor looks on a caftan a man's cloak of the 16th century, at the
exhibition from Byzantium to Istanbul at the Grand Palais in Paris,
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The exhibition, opened earlier this month by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is
the centerpiece of the "Year of Turkey," a panoply of some 400 Turkish
cultural events spread over nine months to allow the French and others
to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.
Olcer says she has collaborated on many international exhibitions that included art from Turkey. Some had focused just on Ottoman art, some on different periods of Turkish art and sometimes just one period of the Turks.
The decision to extend the time span and to focus on Istanbul gives the visitor insight into the array of cultures that have shaped the city, as well as its major role as capital of the Christian Byzantine and the Islamic Ottoman empires.
"The strategy was this. We all are sometimes tending to simplify many things. If Byzantium was a Christian capital, so we think it's been only a Christian capital. If we say after the conquest, after the fall, all of a sudden it has become an Islamic capital. No. It was not like this. Istanbul has been always a multicultural city," she said.
A visitor looks on two Simurgh relief, a mythical medieval creature, at
the exhibition from Byzantium to Istanbul at the Grand Palais in Paris,
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The exhibition, opened earlier this month by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is
the centerpiece of the "Year of Turkey," a panoply of some 400 Turkish
cultural events spread over nine months to allow the French and others
to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.
The visitor begins by looking at artifacts from the Neolithic era and glides into the 8th century B.C., when Greek settlers developed a flourishing port they called Byzantium. A stern marble head of the Greek god Heracles stares out, a stark reminder of the city's classical heritage. Next, a bust of the Roman emperor Constantine, who transformed Byzantium into the capital of his eastern Christian empire in the 4th century.
Golden icons and crosses as well as chalices elaborately decorated with precious stones and pearls evoke the long centuries of the city's Christian era when it was known as Constantinople.
Key to understanding the exhibition is a striking section devoted to Mehmed II, who conquered Constantinople in 1453 at age 21 and ended Byzantine rule. His childhood notes written in Turkish using Arabic script and a letter he wrote to the Italian painter Gentile Bellini inviting him from Venice are displayed alongside a 13th-century copy of Homer's Iliad in Greek, one of the seven languages Mehmet knew.
The exhibition includes portraits by Italian painters of Mehmed and his successors, including Suleyman the Magnificent, a testament to European fascination with the east.
Visitors look at a painting of Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent,
attributed to the school of the Italian painter Titian, 1530, at the
exhibition from Byzantium to Istanbul at the Grand Palais in Paris,
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009. The exhibition, opened earlier this month by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is
the centerpiece of the "Year of Turkey," a panoply of some 400 Turkish
cultural events spread over nine months to allow the French and others
to become better acquainted with Turkey's culture.
Turkey's ethnic and religious minorities long present in Istanbul do not figure prominently, but they are not absent. Engraved stone funeral steles in Armenian, Hebrew and Greek document the city's diversity.
The exhibition ends on a contemporary note with a room devoted to a slideslow of color photographs of the city today and a remarkable display of artifacts of an ancient Byzantine port discovered in 2004 during the construction of an underwater metro station.
"Maybe this exhibition also can open new windows for them (visitors) by looking at the old city with all of its secrets," Olcer said.
"From Byzantium to Istanbul" runs through Jan. 25, 2010.
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On the Web:
http://www.rmn.fr/De-Byzance-a-Istanbul
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Car Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
Taking the Train Instead of the Car in Vermont, USAHere is a special way to combine train travel with a visit to Vermont. For the remainder of 2009, Amtrak is offering a special $12 fare between any 2 communities in Vermont. Seven Vermont communities with historic downtowns are participating in this special promotion: Brattleboro, Bellows Fellow, Windsor, White River Junction, Montpelier, Essex/Burlington, and St. Albans. Amtrak is offering special packages that include hotel stays, free shuttle from the train station to the hotel, and shuttles from the hotel to downtown. For more information about these packages, go to http://www.vermontvacation.com/arts/amtrak_packages.asp Greg Gerdel, from Vermont's Division of Tourism & Marketing, recommends visits to Montpelier (Vermont's state capital). Here's what Greg has to say about Montpelier: This small city in Central Vermont is eminently walkable, though anyone arriving by Amtrak with luggage will want to arrange a shuttle with their hotel or call a taxi. Montpelier is also served by Greyhound, with a new, more convenient stop in the heart of downtown at City Hall. The Green Mountain Transit Authority provides hourly service to nearby Berlin and Barre, as well as commuter services to Burlington and Waterbury and connections to Stowe and Middlebury. www.gmtaride.orgThis smallest of the U.S. state capitols is distinguished by a wealth of restaurants, cafes, galleries, professional theater, live music venues and recreational facilities that are exceptional for a city of 8,800 people. The city's website has comprehensive listings of local events, attractions, shopping and recreational resources: www.montpelier-vt.orgHome to the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the New England Culinary Institute, white-frocked, student chefs frequent the city center while cafes and coffee houses are bustling with laptops and conversation throughout the day. Walking and hiking trails are immediately accessible from town. Just behind the parking area on the east side of the State House, a trail ascends to Hubbard Park and the recently restored, stone observation tower that provides spectacular views in every direction. Trails through the park link to the North Branch Nature Center where visitors will find additional miles of meadow and woodland trails and on-going educational programs and events. One Montpelier Bed and Breakfast: Betsy's Bed and Breakfast, located in downtown Montpelier, will pick up guests at the Amtrak station. When making a reservation (802/229-0446, or email them at betsysbnb@comcast.net), be sure to mention that you are arriving by Amtrak.) In a future column, I will be discussing some bicycle-friendly vacation communities. Please send me your recommended communities, why it is a good vacation choice, your contact information, and what is important to you in choosing a bicycle-friendly vacation destination. E-mail me at steveatlas45@yahoo.com.Steve Atlas's web site is http://carfreeamerica.org. Visit that site for lots of tips and information about reducing car dependency. Steve's first e-book, "Car Free at the Beach," can be found at http://carfreeamerica.com
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
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in the Sustainable Design Program at UC Berkeley Extension.
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