Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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Ecocity Builders
June 2010
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Greetings,
Welcome to the June 2010
edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the
International Ecocity Conference Series.
Here at Ecocity Builders we try to stay focused on the positive even as bad news keeps rolling in - gigantic man-made disasters, wars, natural disasters increasing, corruption increasing, economic collapse, species going under, international laws and treaties being targeted and dismantled, world getting hotter, weather patterns changing, polar caps melting, fewer jobs, less support and money for education, less money for basic services, world leaders not leading.
Not nearly enough of us are collectively hard at work implementing the strategies needed to solve these problems (of course some are). Too much money is still being invested in destructive strategies as corporate shareholders continue to accumulate profits off of the further plundering and destabilization of whole countries and ecosystems. But then, who needs nature at all, or people, when the gurus of technology predict that in a few decades, humans (or the humans with enough money) will merge with machines to become superhuman, godlike, and to hell with everyone else and who cares about clean air, as a super human I won't need that. These are top thinkers recruited by the likes of Google and NASA and super rich individuals grasping for immortality.
Hubris was considered the greatest crime of the
ancient Greek world and often resulted in fatal
retribution. Atë,
ancient Greek for "ruin, folly, delusion," is the action performed by
the hero, usually because of hubris, or great pride, that leads
to death or downfall. Nemesis, another ancient Greek term, is often used to describe one's worst enemy,
normally someone or something that is the exact opposite of oneself but
is also somehow similar.
Herein perhaps lies our Nemesis: our seeming prioritization of technology and a virtual reality, artificial intelligence and artificial people (corporations - recognized as people by the US Supreme Court) over humans and the natural world. It's a theme that has been posed in many iterations many times in myths, legends, literature, and movies.
Ecocities prioritize humankind and the natural order over machines. People building and living in ecocities certainly utilize machines and technology, but the machines and technology don't utilize people.
Sincerely,
Kirstin
Miller for Ecocity Builders
339
15th Street, Suite 208
Oakland
CA 94612 USA
www.ecocitybuilders.org
Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series
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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.
Maybe one day all cities
will be ecocities.
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"The problem is
the present design of cities only a few stories high, stretching
outward in unwieldy sprawl
for miles. As a result of their sprawl, they literally transform
the earth, turn farms into parking lots and waste enormous amounts
of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over
their expanses. My solution is urban implosion rather than explosion."
-Paolo
Soleri
www.arcosanti.org
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Imagining Ecocities
Making cities sustainable is a crucial challenge
by Richard Register
IN MANY WAYS, cities are the main things we human beings build: the
homes, offices, factories, schools, streets and parks gather there, as
do
the vast supply lines pumping in water, food, lumber, gasoline - and
pumping
out waste. And yet, the way cities are built, the logic of their
internal
functions and their connections with resources and natural environment
are
virtually ignored - they are not seen as potentially whole, living
organisms.
We can see houses as homes, and so it should be with cities, but even
more
so. Yet even many conscientious environmentalists, reacting to the
negative
impacts of our present cities, fail to see the great creative, social,
cultural,
even spiritual good that cities can facilitate. Perhaps most people give
up on building the good city before they even consider it seriously
because
of the sheer scale of the task, perhaps because technology and
"Progress"
have failed to give us a secure, humane world and we have lost
confidence
in the idea that we can shape our own destiny. In any case, with the
exception
of war, there is no issue more important for the future of our species
than
making cities ecologically healthy.
The City Past And Present
Imagine yourself five hundred years
ago standing on a hill overlooking town - almost any town, anywhere. In
Europe you see a cluster of buildings two to five stories high: houses,
apartments over stores, small handicrafts shops. There's a walled
section
in the middle of town and surmounting it all is the church or cathedral
spire, a symbol of the community's heaven-oriented religious cosmology.
Overlooking the Indian pueblo in the American Southwest there is again
the
clustered pattern of mixed living and working habitats - this time
revealing
an earth-focused and seasons-conscious religious bent: kivas spotted
around
the communal dance floor, openings in the architecture facing south to
receive
- even celebrate - the warmth of the winter sun.
Now imagine looking over a good-sized present-day city or large town.
There's almost no comprehensible form at all, save the tangle of streets
and freeways we all know go somewhere and link some things (while also
separating
and dividing). The whole scattered amalgam is probably cast in a
yellow-brown
haze of auto emissions over which rise a few scattered, sometimes
clustered
tall buildings, most of them banks and insurance companies.
Towering above even the symbols of money and security, transmission antennas flash sci-fi red lights to ward off giant buzzing
aluminum gnats full of jet powered people. The antennas, we all know,
are
beaming images directly into the houses sprinkled widely in almost
random
patches about the landscape. Therein people worship at the altar of
diversion
from nature and diversion from deeper confrontation with themselves. The
altar, of course, is television, which constantly implores them in their
isolation to make offerings to the giant companies, financed through the
tall buildings (nobody else can afford television time). Looking over
this
town we again see the values and cosmology revealed in the city
structure,
or lack thereof, in this case.
For those few that are students of both ecology and city planning and
design, standing on these fictitious hills viewing these cities reveals
something way beyond, say, the benefits of solar energy, or the value of
scrupulous recycling. The lessons run deeper than the significance of
life-
styles based on minimizing consumption and maximizing conservation. What
comes to the mind of the urban ecologist looks more like this:
Lesson #1. The city must gather people for some worthwhile
reasons
or it would not persevere these hundreds, even thousands, of years.
Lesson #2. But the shape of the city looks connected in some
way to the disastrous condition of the air, farm lands, nature in the
modern
city; that is, flat and sprawled seems to be a problem.
Lesson #3. If we can build cities with millions of acres of
concrete
and asphalt, 100 story buildings, giant metallic insects and
mysterious
remote control communications, then we can build anything - even
a healthy, exciting, vital future replete with cities that serve both
people
and nature.
The City Future
Walk back up that imaginary hill again and try
to picture a city that selects the best of what we have learned from
science
and art, a city that regains consciousness of place and conscience
toward
nature.
Each city according to its location and climate is unique, but many
patterns
are similar to each other and similar to the older towns we looked down
upon earlier in this article. In radically de-emphasizing the automobile
and bringing together again a cluster of many different functions -
urban
planners call it "mixed uses" - the city begins again to take
on a more comprehensible form, more three-dimensional than the sprawled
flat city. The gigantic megalopolises have broken up into smaller cities
linked by speedy public transit, though far more people work and live in
the same town rather than commute from one to another. Where the giant
city
used to cover the countryside like a one- story thick carpet with a few
areas of tall buildings, now nature and agriculture has crept back in
and
pushed the city into a spot pattern of development, rather than a
sprawled
two-dimensional or strip one-dimensional pattern.
Ernest Callenbach in ECOTOPIAportrays the San Francisco Bay Area megalopolis (which includes
Oakland,
San Jose, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Richmond and dozens of smaller,
physically
contiguous towns) as breaking up into a necklace of separate towns
linked
by very high speed public transportation, each town with its own
particular
economy, products and character.
Something like our view from the hill
top. If we zero in with binoculars we begin to see the details. We notice
creeks and small rivers removed from their underground culverts,
restored
to their earlier state between the inhabited "spots" and running
open through cities, their courses bounded by parks and orchards,
gardens
and playgrounds, foot and bicycle paths. The intimate human scale is
everywhere
in evidence with great diversity of detail, but the human scale also
includes
tall buildings. But these buildings are radically different in form and
environmental and social effect. The severe simple boxes of an earlier
era
are broken up with terraces and design features that permit the sun to
warm
in winter and prevent winds from becoming excessively difficult.
Most large buildings are mixed use, many apartments and condos, many
work places. People live here. The kinds of places that need little
natural
light: theaters, photo labs, warehouses, etc., are located in the lower
stories, lifting the downtown activities higher into the sun. The views
are breathtaking. Occasional covered streets have the grandeur of
cathedrals.
Unlike their predecessors, the larger buildings of the ecocity's
downtown,
provide workplaces for non-commuters mainly. The hundreds of thousands
who
once poured into downtowns over billions of dollars of freeway in
hundreds
of billions of dollars worth of cars, now quietly zip in and out by foot
or bicycle from nearby, with a minority coming in by bus and rail. No
car
parking downtown except for emergency delivery and
construction/maintenance
vehicles.
The larger buildings sport multi-story solar greenhouses and rooftop
gardens that compete with local private and communal gardens for food
production
and horticulture. Solar collectors and windmills glint and twinkle in
the
sun. The streets hum with human activity - rather than rumble and scream
with mechanical noise. No air pollution or soot, and no deaths under
rubber
tires. Bridges link many buildings and make the rooftop cafes as lively
as those below on the streets and along the water courses. Arcades,
awnings
and covered walkways make downtown streets negotiable in all kinds of
weather.
Transit shelters and posted schedules make easy work of bus, trolley and
street car travel.
Night time is a great time to be outside moving about and socializing
in the many lively spots - TV looks too passive and dull to these people
who can barely believe that in 1983 the average American family watched
more than seven hours a day. At night the sky is absent of pollution and
almost all glare - stars are everywhere, astronomical observatories have
begun to function properly again. In the day, song birds and
hummingbirds
fill the fragrant air of the "carfree zones" and neighborhoods.
In the lower-density areas that remain, streets are made narrower -
almost
no parking is needed since these neighborhoods are within bicycling
distance
of employment and walking distances from transit. The streets are
generally
narrowed from the north side so that gardens can be planted with minimal
shading from the buildings on the south side of the street. South-facing
houses frequently have retro-fitted greenhouses, north-facing ones are
often
peeking out from fruit trees - many of these homes have backyard
greenhouses
and vegetable gardens. Some streets in low density areas are removed
entirely,
replaced by foot paths and bicycle routes. The local "fruit and nut
brigade" cares for, plants and harvests many of the street trees, making
the city almost as productive as straight-forward conventional orchards,
but here the distribution costs are exceptionally low.
Some lower density areas have also been transformed by the integral
neighborhood
idea, in which village scale arrangements function for most practical
matters:
workspaces approximately balance adult residential space, considerable
food
is produced, recycling approaches 100%, stores for everyday merchandise
and handicrafts are on hand - and the rest of the city, its colleges,
hospitals,
movie houses, street theater, art galleries, larger employers and
specialized
markets are a short bicycle or transit ride away.
From the top of the hill, television and radio towers are less
conspicuous. But knowing something of what goes on in town, we
also
know more about the quality and style of communication. Information
storage
and retrieval technology, once worshipped in the declining years of the
industrial age, is now seen as a useful filing system in certain
circumstances,
but information per se isgiven no particular status.
People
have learned to select far more carefully the information that helps
preserve
and explore life. There is more discretion, less tolerance for
irrelevant
and degrading information and images. The whole society in deciding to
build
ecocities, made a commitment to bringing lifestyle into harmony with the
biosphere - the process of making meaningful choices has rubbed off on
everyone.
ECOCITY PRINCIPLES
The ecocity functions according to certain principles, which, if
understood
by many people, could begin influencing cities in positive directions
immediately.
Small scale - highly qualified. Equal population areas of Los
Angeles
and New York are radically different in physical size. Despite its large
buildings, New York covers a much smaller amount of land, uses about 1/3
the energy per capita (despite its far more extreme weather), and has
very
few cars and much smaller square footage per person in asphalt and
concrete
streets, freeways, interchanges, parking structures, vehicles. The issue
of optimum or maximum size of an ecocity has hardly been broached
because
most thinking on ecologically healthy alternative communities has
focused
on villages and small towns, while people contemplating future cities
have
generally not dared to believe they could be radically reformed.
The key
question in issues of scale: what is the final cultural and ecological
impact?
If it is possible to have a high population, say one million people in a
city or cluster of cities, and use considerably less resources than
conventional
small towns of the same population total, then that's not such a bad
arrangement.
But at whatever population, the scale of material consumption and waste
should be much smaller than in today's cities and villages.
Paolo Soleri takes the idea of the small city to its paradoxical
conclusion.
This architect who is building Arcosanti in Arizona, is promoting the
building
of whole towns in a single structure or a tightly interlinked cluster of
stylistically consistent tall buildings. In these structures, land area
for human society would reach its absolute smallest with cities of
100,000
or 1,000,000 covering only tens or hundreds of acres, using almost no
energy
at all once built (save solar energy and human waste heat energy) and
producing
virtually no pollution - almost all wastes would be recycled as new
resources.
It would be very informative to learn how such a city would work - or
why
it would not, and in which ways. Unfortunately this smallest of all
cities
(and potentially largest of all buildings) is so enveloped in narrow
criticism
and so plagued with operational problems and lack of money at the one
location
it is being attempted, it's unlikely to be actually built within the
decade
or so. The price for a town-sized "arcology" as Paolo calls his
ultra- compact cities, would be less than an aircraft carrier.
Access by Proximity is an important principle of ecological
city
building. If enough diversity is close
enough, you don't need to travel a lot for life's basics: residence,
job,
school... The idea is to design maximum access right into the city
structure.
Mixed use zoning again, but the principle goes further than this.
Proximity
access policies could also include local hiring practices, renting
apartments
to people who don't own cars and who work nearby, making bank loans
available
in the neighborhoods from which the savings come (very often low income
urban areas have accumulated savings in great excess of the loans made
in
those same areas, while suburban developers use those funds for anti-
ecological
construction). Another proximity policy: ordinances permitting increased
residential construction in activity centers and prohibiting it in
farther-out
areas. Land trusts and public bond issues, as in Stockholm, could
purchase
structures in car-dependent areas and convert suburbia back to nature,
agriculture,
or ecologically stable villages.
Small scale recentralization We hear a great deal about
decentralization
- but it has to be thought out well or it quickly falls into serious
contradictions.
Suburbia is perhaps the most decentralized form of human development
behind
scattered farms and ranches. But suburbia supports the most centralized
establishments conceivable: giant automobile manufacturers and oil
companies.
The suburbanite sits decentralized in his or her little home watching a
communications medium so big and centralized only a handful of companies
in the whole country can afford to advertise (and decide what goes) on
it.
From the ecocity point of view, cities, towns and even villages should
be
recentralized physically and decentralized in terms of participation in
community life and politics.
Diversity is healthy This is perhaps the largest, broadest
principle
of all. In cities, as in agriculture and most natural ecological areas,
diversity is healthy. Some call diversity complexity and shy away from
it
in many aspects of life. Some are fatigued by life in today's cities and
think it's because the environment is complex. but how complex is
sitting
in one position driving to work in a car hours each week, doing a
repetitive
job or conforming to dress codes and social expectations? It's far more
complex to be deeply involved in your neighborhood or tending a large
garden
than doing most of the tiring things of life in the present city. With a
closer look, the simple life isn't so simple either and the most complex
activities of all are probably the choices people have to make about
important
moral issues. If we look toward ecology and evolution we see that the
tendency
toward complexity, toward environments and situations involving great
diversity,
are precisely those environments and situations that cause individuals
and
species to survive, grow and diversify. War is exactly the opposite: a
convulsion
that wipes the slate clean of its messy little details and leaves the
ravaged
place simplified. The implication of all this is that cities built with
the mixed use notion are on the right track.
RESOURCES
Ecocity Builders, 339 15th Street, Suite 208, Oakland CA 94612. Ian
McHarg's
Design with Nature, Paolo Soleri's Arcology, the City in the Image of Man, and E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful contribute
key
ideas to the basic ecocity concept. Books like the one written
by
the author of this article, Ecocities, Kenneth
Schneider's
Autokind vs. Mankind, Paul Downton's Ecopolis: Architecture and cities for a changing climate, go even
more directly to the prescription for ecological cities. The bioregional context for
these cities is developed in Peter Berg's work with the Planet Drum Foundationof San Francisco.
Richard Register can be reached at ecocity@igc.org.
This article was adapted from an earlier version published in In Context Magazine. Copyright
(c)1985,
1997 by Context Institute
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2010
Thursday
Please join us for "Ecocity Dreamin'" -- Ecocity Builders Fundraiser and Party
 Thursday
June 24, 2010 6pm-9pm SPUR Urban Center 654 Mission Street San Francisco, CA First annual silent art auction and
party to support Ecocity Builders Please note: this is a fundraiser! $50 donation request, goes toward bidding. more info
June 29 - July 16Richard Register art exhibition - "Ecocity Dreamin'" SPUR Urban Center654 Mission Street San
Francisco, CA August 17 - 20Chengde, China The 4th International Ecocity ForumEccocity Builders' Executive Director
Kirstin Miller to present the International Ecocity Standards Project Fall Semester, UC Berkeley Extension" Ecological Cities" taught by Kirstin Miller, Executive Director, Ecocity Builders October 4-7Vancouver, Canada Gaining
Ground Presents: Eco Logical, The Power of Green Cities to Shape the FutureEcocity Builders and the
International Ecocity Standards Project will present and lead a
facilitated workshop 2011Ecocity World Summit, the 9th International Ecocity ConferenceAugust 22-26, 2011 Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada Hosted
by Urban Ecology Montréal, Ecocity World
Summit 2011 will build on work of past
Ecocity World Summits while adding new conference themes, participatory
methods, and projects that will last beyond the life of the conference.
Detailed conference content and design will be developed in
collaboration with local and international partners, making sure that
the particular urban ecological expertise of Montréal is highlighted. |
Tyrannus
Mobilitis
Excerpted from Autokind vs. Mankind
by Kenneth R. Schneider, 1972
Ecocity pioneer Ken Schneider contemplates the world of cars in the early days of their takeover.
Man has always had his tragedies. Today he has the
automobile, a tragedy of love.
Of course, the automobile is different. A plague, a famine,
or an old-fashioned war was always disapproved, at least in public.
But the car? Well, this is a tragedy man invented and
builds. Unblushingly he founded a mechanical harem of immense numbers. He tries
to love and support them all. He claims he can't do without any of them.
Love and necessity! What steps toward disaster could be more
irresistible?
As always, love and necessity are connected. Man first took
his love into his urban habitat. Then he rooted about to make the habitat
commodious for her. In time the human environment is shaken apart for her. She demands
pavement voraciously. She commands entrance to man's most exclusive courts and
plazas, parks and promenades. She takes her private space in homes and office
buildings, as well as in those edifices her special make-up requires for her
very own.
The amazons of the harem eagerly help remake the whole city
to suit her own special scale and behavior. The result is an uprooting of man's
civic and social heritage. He is soon rudely disenchanted about his harem. But
it is too late. Automobiles are in control. They are now a necessity.
Without doubt the automobile is a marvelous thing. It could
not have succeeded otherwise. But whenever we find anything so attractive to
man as the automobile, we must always beware of tyranny. Autos are a serious affliction,
one of those peculiar to modern man's touch of Midas: television, nuclear
fission, rich foods, California. The wealth and power behind these tyrannies of
progress grow.
The social malignancy underlying automobility, tyrannus mobilitis, draws men into
inescapable dependence. Dependence arises from a vicious circle in which the
charm of the car and the remaking of the environment reinforce each other.
Automobility gradually permeates the daily behavior of people, the purpose of institutions,
and the structure of the cities and countryside. This tyranny has been promoted
under the cunning popular myth of expanding freedom and affluence.
Illustrator: Richard Headman, Autokind Vs. Mankind, Shocken Books, Kenneth Schneider, New York, 1972.
The current reality of auto tyranny is cultural power,
social blackmail, physical deprivation, injury, and death. We must not mistake
the brutal grip. The automobile is defended by a tradition of three generations,
by a popular belief which finds expression in prayers for parking and by a
disciplined establishment spanning the highest and lowest levels of industry,
government, and science. When the automobile is challenged, Detroit and its
allies brandish the specter of economic decline as an open threat to our whole
society.
And automobilism still grows amidst us. The city is becoming
ever more deranged by freeway divisions and parking wastelands. The auto's
claims on iron and petroleum resources are accelerating. What's more, the
tyrannous forces brag about it and claim that more and more resources are
required. They are able to construe the acceleration of consumptiveness and
systematic waste as ideals.
There can be only one meaning: a new will of immense power
and wily ego steadily saps the very sovereignty of Mankind. History and
language present neither examples for comparison nor terms to describe such a
phenomenon. Tyranny it is. But more, it is a new social purpose defined by the
new sovereignty. The sovereignty is the possession of what we will call Autokind.
The lines of the coming conflict, therefore, are clearly
set: Autokind vs. Mankind. The goal for man in the struggle is simple: to
recapture his sovereignty. Understandably the struggle between man and motor
will be revolutionary, for the aggressive tyranny now enjoys a Quisling's
support from the conservative tradition of Mankind itself.
Imagine clean air, fifty thousand fewer dead, and the end of
congestion. Imagine the city renewed man-size. Imagine converting the tense
journey to work into a stroll, possible with a brief, comfortable, and direct
ride by aerial tramway.
The city design for man will assure the diverse and intense
interests of urbanity: the many shops, plazas, and places for easy
congregation; the large open areas of serene urban beauty, all within minutes
of every door. But today both urbanity and openness are lost experience in the
vast Lakewoods and Levittowns. The automobile disperses and isolates the homes
and places of interest that together constitute urbanity, while it
simultaneously divides and therefore destroys natural openness.
In liberating the city from the car we will make the city
efficient, ironically, just as Henry Ford made his auto factory efficient with
the assembly line. But our efficiency will be organized for people - their
behavior, their bodies, their senses, their associations, and even their casual
inclinations. It will accelerate the incestuous cycle of runaway production and
compulsive consumption. The environment will be made free for new, not wild
machines.
For our rebellion to succeed a revolutionary leadership is
required to purge the motor myths, rebuild the human ideals and social goals,
formulate the grand strategy, recruit and organize the cadres, and lead the
uprising. And through the struggle and victory we will discover new wellsprings
of the human spirit, as we have in other struggles against tyranny.
Before man can be freed from servitude, the machines must be
totally subordinated. Ideally they should be as obedient, silent, and
unobtrusive as the city's sewer system. For the first time in the modern era it
will be possible for society to be organized, of, by, and (without question) for people. Yet to exercise their
renewed franchise the people require considerable rehabilitation. Their will
has been reduced to buying habits and route planning.
The tasks for this volume
are to describe how the human defeat took place, analyze the nature of the auto
tyranny, report how autokind continues to advance against us, prepare the
general strategy for reconquest, and, lastly, to plan for the new free society.
Article excerpted from the
introduction to Autokind vs. Mankind, An Analysis of Tyranny, A Proposal
for Rebellion,
A plan for Reconstruction by Kenneth R. Schneider, Shocken Books, New York, 1972
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Ecocity Gallery - June 2010
Ecocity Builders' Mobile Workshop for Toward a Just Metropolis, a conference for planners, designers, activists,
policymakers and citizens dedicated to a just future
for all human settlements.
Starting with a walking tour down the Pine Street
commercial corridor in West Oakland, Ecocity Builders and neighborhood community leaders guided participants through
localized efforts in creating an alternative model for socio-cultural,
economic, and environmental self-reliance. We visited the Black Dot
Cafe, Cornelia Bell Black Bottoms Gallery, Village Bottoms Farm, and the
Black New World performance venue. The tour incorporated an open
exchange of ideas and resources for the project moving forward at the
Black Dot Cafe.
Black Dot Cafe
Marcel Diallo leads the walking tour
We visited to several Ecocity Builders' projects in Berkeley, beginning with
the Codornices Creek daylighting
project, pocket park and community fruit orchard.
Richard Register and workshop attendees at Codornices Creek
This used to be a parking lot
Then the tour was on to the
Gaia Building where we discussed the
project design history of this infill development with Berkeley's first
live roof and car-light housing plan, with stunning bay and hills views.
Rooftop of the Gaia building, 1st live roof in Berkeley
Richard Register talks about the building design process and how he worked with the developer
The final session was
on the plan for Stawberry Creek Plaza in downtown Berkeley and the
Berkeley campus and Ecocity Builders proposed integration of the creek
into the design of the plaza as a car free public space in the heart of
downtown with deep green features, such as storm water capture and
reuse, and permeable paving. (Sorry we somehow didn't get this section photographed.)
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SAVE THE DATE!
August 22-26, 2011
Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada
Hosted by Urban Ecology Montréal, Ecocity World
Summit 2011 will build on work of past
Ecocity World Summits while adding new conference themes, participatory
methods, and projects that will last beyond the life of the conference.
Detailed conference content and design will be developed in
collaboration with local and international partners, making sure that
the particular urban ecological expertise of Montréal is highlighted.
Website
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Car Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
When was the last time you found something that most people
never knew existed? That's how I felt when one of our readers told me about
Indiana Dunes State Park. From Chicago (1 hour and 20 minutes), South Bend (1 hour and
10 minutes), or Gary (20 minutes) take Chicago's South Shore commuter rail Line,
to Dune Park. This train operates 7 days a week. From Dune Park station, it is
just a ten-minute walk to Indiana Dunes State Park. The best Chicago station for most people is Millenium
Station: 150 East Randolph Street (corner of Michigan Ave.) in downtown Chicago.
(South Bend is on Eastern Time, but all the other Indiana stations are on
Central Time.) For schedule and fare information, visit http://www.nictd.com, or call 800-356-2079 Indiana Dunes State Park ($2 admission per person) is about a 10-minute walk from Dunes Park
Station. The Pavilion at the park has concessions and rest rooms. Between
Memorial Day and Labor Day, lifeguards are on duty everyday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
A staff member at the park recommends staying until evening to enjoy a stunning
view of the Chicago skyline. For more information about Indian Dunes State
Park, visit http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/2980.htm,
or call (219) 926-1952.
What is your favorite vacation
spot that you enjoyed without a car? E-mail me ( steveatlas45@yahoo.com,) and in the
subject line put, Car Free Journey Favorite Vacation. Please include your contact
information. If I use your suggestion, I'll send you a free copy of my e-book: Car Free at the Beach (2010
updated edition). The 2010 edition of Steve's e-book, spotlighting 20 U.S.
beaches you can enjoy without a car, is now available. For more information,
and a free report, visit http://carfreeamerica.com |
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Ecocity Builders and our network of members -
- Pioneer ecological concepts in urban transportation, landscape design, policy, and planning
- Engage with communities, government, and industry leaders in designing thriving neighborhoods
- Convene movers and shakers in urban and regional planning and community building at our International Ecocity Conference
Ecocity Builders nurtures great visions for healthier cities - for people and nature alike - and provides practical tools for building them. We are a nonprofit organization, and donations are tax-deductible. All levels receive a subscription to the newsletter, special invitations to meetings and events, updates and more.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN
Buy our books
Take part in our active projects
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
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