gmane.politics.activism.carfree-cities

Re: "Cars Are the New Smoking"

Erik Sandblom — 2008-11-27T16:50:54

--- In carfree_cities-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org, Richard Risemberg ...> wrote: And cycling is the new internet! http://groups.google.com/group/uk.rec.cycling/browse_thread/ thread/820b04479c9a2670 Erik Sandblom

London congestion charge zone to be halved

Erik Sandblom — 2008-11-27T17:24:57

The Times: London congestion charge zone slashed by Boris Johnson http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5244993.ece The extension, covering Kensington and Chelsea and part of Westminster, will not be removed until Spring 2010 while Mr Johnson undertakes the legal process of rescinding the scheme. ... Among businesses, 86 per cent supported the extension's removal. But a separate TfL survey of a balanced sample of 2,000 Londoners showed 45 per cent in favour of keeping some form of charging in the extension, while only 41 per cent supported removal. ... Transport for London admitted that traffic and air pollution would rise inside the western extension area when the charge was removed. The number of cars entering the extension area has fallen by 30,000 a day since the charge was introduced in February last year. Mr Johnson plans to tackle congestion by re-phasing traffic lights to add one or two seconds to each green phase for vehicles. Pedestrians, however, will have to wait longer for their green phase. See also Guardian: Boris Johnson axes London congestion charge extension http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/27/congestioncharging- london Mayor scraps the western extension to the c-charge zone by 2010

Re: "Cars Are the New Smoking"

Matt Hohmeister — 2008-11-26T22:55:41

They've made some good points, however, there are no laws I know of that force property owners to provide free, on-site smoking areas. The same cannot be said for parking, of course. Universities don't force students to pay "smoking access fees" so the few students who do smoke have places to do so. However, you can easily draw a comparison with the costs to the health care system--or since I live in a country without a functioning health care system, my private health insurance premiums. --- In carfree_cities-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org, Richard Risemberg ...> wrote:

Crowd-Source a Car-Free Documetary?

Chris — 2008-11-26T19:04:40

I wanted to post this question to this list to tap into the expertise and wisdom that I've been reading for a couple of years now. My name is Chris Holt and I run a website (www.scaledown.ca) dedicated to furthering the discussion of making my hometown (Windsor, Ontario - across the river from Detroit) a livable, walkable city. Windsor's also known as the "Automotive Capital of Canada" and currently experiencing the worst economic outook in our history, which makes my project even more poiniant. I am at the beginning of a 12 month "experiment" where I'm filming the transition of a young family (myself and my two kids) going from an autocentric lifestyle to a carfree one. We're using this springboard to examine our cultures devotion to the automobile and the ramifications and costs (social, economic and health-wise) of that devotion. Somewhere in there I would also like to highlight my communities reliance on the ever increasing sales of cars and the unsustainability of that fact (Windsor is the birthplace of Ford Canada, just celebrating 100 years, as well as being home to a few Chrysler and GM plants as well) Personally, I am a fouth generation Ford worker (in my family since 1914) who is on indefinite layoff. I would like to tap into the collective conscience of the car-free movement to make this a great film. I am also toying with the possibilities of making this a "crowd-sourced" project, utilizing the experience of scholars and activists around the world to "build" this film together. I am especially interested in highligting successful communities and how they have moved toward more of a pedestrian- centred transpotation system. The questions I would like to see this film address, among others, are "What are the impediments to living a car-free lifestyle", and "What would it take to overcome those impediments and get the average motorist to step out of their car on a regular basis". I'll leave it there to hopefully discuss with this list further. If you are interested in sending me a note off-list, please feel free to at chris-QE9FyrDXuAIV+D8aMU/kSg< at >public.gmane.org Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Chris Holt www.scaledown.ca ScaleDown Radio, 91.5 FM PS If there are any Toronto-area activists/scholars reading this, I will be in Toronto from Dec 9 - 11th discussing the project with the CBC. I will also be collecting some footage as well, and would be interested in meeting up with you.

"Cars Are the New Smoking"

Richard Risemberg — 2008-11-26T15:09:26

Interesting: http://www.squawkfox.com/2008/07/25/cars-are-the-new-smoking/ Rick -- Richard Risemberg http://www.bicyclefixation.com http://www.newcolonist.com http://www.rickrise.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

in case you thought you had anything to be thankful for

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-26T14:31:16

Hi All, There's this cheerful note this morning. Joel http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/25-1 Wednesday, November 26, 2008 Published on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 by The Guardian/UK One Shot Left The latest science suggests that preventing runaway climate change means total decarbonisation. by George Monbiot George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3000(1). His backers among them the nastiest pollutocrats in America are calling in their favours. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble. If it is now too late to prevent runaway climate change, the Bush team must carry much of the blame. His wilful trashing of the Middle Climate the interlude of benign temperatures which allowed human civilisation to flourish makes the mass murder he engineered in Iraq only the second of his crimes against humanity. Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror. Is it too late? To say so is to make it true. To suggest that there is nothing that can now be done is to ensure that nothing is done. But even a resolute optimist like me finds hope ever harder to summon. A new summary of the science published since last year's Intergovernmental Panel report suggests that - almost a century ahead of schedule - the critical climate processes might have begun(2). Just a year ago the Intergovernmental Panel warned that the Arctic's "late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century in some models."(3) But, as the new report by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) shows, climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer sea ice within three to seven years. The trajectory of current melting plummets through the graphs like a meteorite falling to earth. Forget the sodding polar bears: this is about all of us. As the ice disappears, the region becomes darker, which means that it absorbs more heat. A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the entire region of continuous permafrost(4). Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere(5). It remains safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter(6). The effects of melting permafrost are not incorporated into any global climate models. Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip the entire planet into a new climatic state. The Middle Climate could collapse faster and sooner than the grimmest forecasts proposed. Barack Obama's speech to the US climate summit last week was an astonishing development(7). It shows that, in this respect at least, there really is a prospect of profound political change in America. But while he described a workable plan for dealing with the problem perceived by the Earth Summit of 1992, the measures he proposes are now hopelessly out of date. The science has moved on. The events the Earth Summit and the Kyoto process were supposed to have prevented are already beginning. Thanks to the wrecking tactics of Bush the elder, Clinton (and Gore) and Bush the younger, steady, sensible programmes of the kind that Obama proposes are now irrelevant. As the PIRC report suggests, the years of sabotage and procrastination have left us with only one remaining shot: a crash programme of total energy replacement. A paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research shows that if we are to give ourselves a roughly even chance(8,9) of preventing more than two degrees of warming, global emissions from energy must peak by 2015 and decline by between six and eight per cent per year from 2020 to 2040, leading to a complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050(10). Even this programme would work only if some optimistic assumptions about the response of the biosphere hold true. Delivering a high chance of preventing two degrees of warming would mean cutting global emissions by over 8% a year. Is this possible? Is this acceptable? The Tyndall paper points out that annual emission reductions greater than one per cent have "been associated only with economic recession or upheaval." When the Soviet Union collapsed, they fell by some 5% a year. But you can answer these questions only by considering the alternatives. The trajectory both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have proposed - an 80% cut by 2050 - means reducing emissions by an average of 2% a year. This programme, the figures in the Tyndall paper suggest, is likely to commit the world to at least four or five degrees of warming(11), which means the likely collapse of human civilisation across much of the planet. Is this acceptable? The costs of a total energy replacement and conservation plan would be astronomical, the speed improbable. But the governments of the rich nations have already deployed a scheme like this for another purpose. A survey by the broadcasting network CNBC suggests that the US federal government has now spent $4.2 trillion in response to the financial crisis, more than the total spending on World War Two when adjusted for inflation(12). Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse? This approach is challenged by the American thinker Sharon Astyk. In an interesting new essay, she points out that replacing the world's energy infrastructure involves "an enormous front-load of fossil fuels", which are required to manufacture wind turbines, electric cars, new grid connections, insulation and all the rest(13). This could push us past the climate tipping point. Instead, she proposes, we must ask people "to make short term, radical sacrifices", cutting our energy consumption by 50%, with little technological assistance, in five years. There are two problems: the first is that all previous attempts show that relying on voluntary abstinence does not work. The second is that a 10% annual cut in energy consumption while the infrastructure remains mostly unchanged means a 10% annual cut in total consumption: a deeper depression than the modern world has ever experienced. No political system - even an absolute monarchy - could survive an economic collapse on this scale. She is right about the risks of a technological green new deal, but these are risks we have to take. Astyk's proposals travel far into the realm of wishful thinking. Even the technological solution I favour inhabits the distant margins of possibility. Can we do it? Search me. Reviewing the new evidence, I have to admit that we might have left it too late. But there is another question I can answer more easily. Can we afford not to try? No we can't. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008 ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

free public transport

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-22T20:50:07

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/22-3 Published on Saturday, November 22, 2008 by CommonDreams.org An Alternative to the Auto Bailout by Reede Stockton As the Big Three US automakers ramp up their pressure on Congress to cough up $25 billion in bailout money, the absence of a long term vision for economic recovery has never been more clear. The outgoing Bush administration and Congress are careening from bailout proposal to bailout proposal, putting hundreds of billions into the hands of the same people that created this toxic economic brew. Naomi Klein has recently detailed the horrifying parallels between the "free-fraud" zone created by the Bush administration in Iraq and the Treasury Department's handling of the bank bailout (http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/10/bailout-profiteers). As tempting as it is to offer bailout money to the US automakers in return for fleet-wide mileage reductions, changes in the mix of their fleets to include more hybrids and electric vehicles, and to support labor, it would be the wrong thing to do under current conditions. Imports from foreign automakers have backed up in American ports over the last few months and now represent roughly double the normal inventory, so the difficulties faced by automakers are not limited to US firms. US automakers, however, have additional problems because their fleets are dominated by too-large, fuel-inefficient models. That fleet makeup cannot be quickly changed. No matter what Congress does, US automakers are unlikely to survive this economic crisis as major car manufacturers. Over the years they have consistently made decisions that wedded themselves to the cheap oil past. And now, unsurprisingly, Congress is legitimately concerned that the $25 billion the industry wants will just postpone the inevitable. We need an alternative vision of economic development that is fully articulated and backed by a long term plan that builds momentum for a new green economy. Each new stimulus proposal must be evaluated in the context of its contribution to building green infrastructure, providing training for green careers and furthering a vision to build our local green economies. In that context, it is easy to see how wasteful $25 billion for the US auto industry would really be. Obama has already signaled that he understands massive expenditures will be required over the next several years to avoid economic catastrophe. No single issue gets to the heart of what is clearly an unsustainable American lifestyle as effectively as transportation. We should be prepared to spend 3-4 trillion dollars over the next 20 years, much of it front-loaded to have maximum impact upon the current economic downturn, to massively overhaul the structure of transportation in this country in a way that supports local green space, local agriculture, local artisans, local industry, relies solely upon clean energy, and improves the livability of American towns and cities. The federal government should rebuild passenger rail systems throughout the country and should offer to pay 100% of the cost for transit systems (including bus, light rail, train, subway, jitney, whatever) in any area with population over 10,000. The conditions for 100% subsidy of a local transit system should be that transportation must be FREE, it must rely solely upon clean energy, and coverage in terms of both hours and geography must be adequate to offer a complete replacement for automobile ownership for those who wish to abandon their cars. Why free? For years and years, the US has encouraged automobile usage and suburban/exurban sprawl by subsidizing cheap oil and providing massive sums for interstate highway construction. The result has been an ecological and human catastrophe. Providing free mass transit amounts to reversal of that tax benefit in a way that encourages, but does not require, the abandonment of the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation in the US. Imagine metropolitan areas with 50% or more of the acreage currently devoted to individual cars suddenly available for green space, pedestrian malls, community gardens, and bike paths. Imagine urban agriculture zones and walkable neighborhoods. Imagine a sharp reduction in CO2 emissions from transportation. All of this and more will happen when we move away from the individual auto. The needs of this country and the world are so huge after 8 years of Bush that it will be very difficult for Obama to avoid being pulled all over the map by competing interests. It is tremendously important that he and Congress understand which initiatives are the key, momentum-building, transformative proposals. For Obama and the incoming Congress, it's important to forego the bailout of the Big Three and develop a bold transportation alternative that reverses the dysfunctional growth of our autombile-driven economy. Reede Stockton works on Climate Equity and coordinates Online Activism for Global Exchange, and international human rights organization based in San Francisco. ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

Cycling Boom in London

Richard Risemberg — 2008-11-22T15:26:57

A quote: And a link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5209077.ece Rick -- Richard Risemberg http://www.bicyclefixation.com http://www.newcolonist.com http://www.rickrise.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

oil

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-21T15:13:26

Hi All, See: http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/20/news/companies/okeefe_oil_stocks.fortune/index.htm on oil supply prospects. Best, Joel The case for buying oil stocks Investor Daily: Even with gas prices in free fall and the global economy sputtering, now may be the time to bulk up on oil shares (if you dare). By Brian O'Keefe, senior editor Last Updated: November 21, 2008: 7:26 AM ET NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Last week, the Paris-based International Energy Agency released its World Energy Outlook 2008 - a 578-page book full of future supply, demand, and price estimates which this year also included an eagerly-awaited study of 800 of the world's largest oil fields. Here's the executive summary: Buy oil stocks. Considering that the price of oil has plummeted from $147 a barrel in early July to below $50 and that the global economic slowdown is putting a major damper on demand, that might not seem like such a good idea. But as the IEA study makes clear, the long-term supply and demand picture for oil continues to favor higher prices. Maybe much higher. The report estimates that energy demand will grow 1.6% a year on average through 2030, for a total increase of 45%. To meet that demand, daily oil production will need to rise from today's level of 85 million barrels to 106 million barrels. The study found high and rising depletion rates at existing oil fields that will make it increasingly hard for new supplies to keep pace. So, the IEA says, the world needs to invest some $26 trillion over the next couple of decades in infrastructure and exploration. "Given what we know about the decline rates, just to stay flat [in global oil production] we'd have to add the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias between now and 2030," said Matt Simmons, chairman of Houston energy investment bank Simmons & Co. International and author of Twilight in the Desert, the 2005 book that argues that even oil-rich Saudi Arabia's petroleum production might have peaked. "It's a very, very scary study. It's hard to argue with the data and it's ghastly what the data says." Over the next seven years, the IEA predicts that the price of oil will average $100 a barrel, and rise to more than $110 by 2030. "The era of cheap oil is over," Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA executive director, told reporters at a press conference in London. If Tanaka is right, the vicious sell-off in the equity markets over the past couple of months makes this a historically good entry point for investors looking to grab oil-industry bargains. etc. ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

Las Catalinas - (Nearly) Car Free town under development in Costa Rica

chasbrew — 2008-11-20T18:54:29

I wanted to make this group aware of a project I am working on in Costa Rica. It is intended to be a seaside resort town. There is a public road that passes through the town, which will have vehicles. But beyond that our intention is to make it largely car-free. New Urbanist designers and architects have been very much involved in the work to date. Frankly from their point of view I am rather extreme in my anti-car tendencies! Anyway I thought that you in this group might find the project of interest and might have some thoughts to offer. I hope that we can create quite a remarkably wonderful place here. And the fact that it is a resort town, rather than a regular work-a-day town, I believe gives us some extra degrees of freedom in trying some things (such as restrictions on car use)that would be harder to do in another setting. We don't have an real website up yet but I created a little site here where you can find some basic information: http://lascatalinas.wordpress.com/ We also have a work-group site where we carry on some interesting discussions about various design issues. That one is password protected so if you have an interest in getting access there let me know. Cheers, Charles Brewer Managing Member, Las Catalinas PS - I don't use my yahoo account for email so better to post here if you want to get in touch with me.

Fwd: VTPI News Traffic Safety Special Edition

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-20T15:17:07

----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

45 Days in Jail for Driver who Rode Around with Cyclist on the Hood of his Car

laurbanista — 2008-11-20T11:08:13

Road Rage Against Cyclist Last summer, the Oregonian reported an incident between a cyclist and a deranged driver in Portland: Jason Scott Rehnberg, 37, yelled at the car to slow down, and apparently angered by the remark, the driver chased the cyclist. He rode his bike into the neighborhood to escape and after a while, probably thinking he was safe, he went back on the road where the incident first happened. But the driver saw Rehnberg and backed his car to try to hit him. Read on for the rest of the story, including a video of Rehnberg on the hood of the car... Like in the Movies, Except Without a Stuntman After jumping off his bike just in time to avoid being hit, "Rehnberg and two other witnesses tried to block the car, saying they wanted to get the license plate. Millican allegedly drove at the three and struck Rehnberg, who was thrown onto the hood. Rehnberg held onto the windshield wipers as the car traveled at a high rate of speed and took a turn." A witness took this video at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/cyclist-on-hood-of-car-portland-oregon.php Cyclist on car hood

Re: recycling big-box stores

Matt Hohmeister — 2008-11-20T01:05:18

Good points. Poorly built big boxes, essentially disposable buildings, will likely wind up demolished. I know that Tallahassee has plenty of abandoned big boxes, and nobody wants to buy or lease them. There are two other building types whose future makes me wonder: - Large enclosed malls. The Tallahassee Mall here opened in 1971, and seems to be well built, as it has withstood countless additions and tenant modifications. However, this mall is 747,000 square feet and over a quarter of a mile end-to-end, which is pretty out of place in any carfree environment, unless you give it its own metro stop. Will these buildings wind up in the hands of metal recyclers too? - Parking garages. They dominate the landscape in the downtown area and higher-education campuses here. FAMU has had one for a while, TCC just got its first, and FSU just got its fifth. I can see two fates to these things: (1) Demolished. These things are quite difficult to convert to indoor space, thanks to short ceilings and, well, giant ramps between floors. A 6-story underground parking garage here with buildings on top of it could wind up abandoned, being too difficult to demolish. (2) Parking. As surface parking lots disappear and roads turn into usable public or private land, parking garages would remain to hold what few vehicles remain. Maintain a 20 mph road with speed humps from the garages to the nearest highways. Privatize the parking garages so their costs are actually covered by parking fees. The only problem: nobody wants to be anywhere near a parking garage, especially one frequented by college students who tend to have car alarms, extremely loud stereos, and mufflers designed to amplify engine noise, all of which radiate for blocks. ...

Progress in New York City

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-19T15:41:14

Hi All, You must see this video: http://local.theoildrum.com/node/4711 New York is actually doing something! Best, Joel ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

Re: Re: recycling big-box stores

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-18T02:51:40

Hi All, Some issues here: 1) Some big-box stores in Europe are served by good public transport, although most are not. All but a few of them are located away from the city center on the cheapest land that could be obtained. Almost all are very near busy highways. 2) I think that the basic structure of big boxes is unsuited to most kinds of redevelopment. These buildings are typically about two stories tall, but the roof structures are often very deep and crossed by trusses, so much of that space is not usable for most purposes. The extent of the buildings is so vast that there is virtually no way to bring natural light into most of the building. 3) The quality of construction is generally very poor. These are engineered structures in the worst sense of the word. Even the addition of a mezzanine floor, required to make real use of the space, would probably overload the columns and their footings, which are no larger than they absolutely must be. These buildings probably have design lives of 30 years. 4) The addition of water and sewer services will require taking up much of the floor, which is probably reinforced concrete in most cases. This would entail cutting through the rebar in order to lay piping. It can be done, but it is expensive. 5) The scale of these buildings is simply too large to make them attractive for redevelopment. So, I would not waste a lot of time and effort on this question. Most of these buildings will be demolished and their steel members recycled. Some of the utility installations might be salvaged. The rest is land fill. Lots of it. Best, Joel ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

Re: Re: recycling big-box stores

Brian Labadie — 2008-11-18T00:24:46

This is all very interesting and a great investigation into the reuse of unlikely structures, however, when considering this from a carfree perspective, the feasability depends on the location of the subject "big box". If the location is removed from public transport and in a low density suburban setting (and that is usually the case with these type of developments), why encourage the reuse of it? People would still have to drive to the location, defeating its purpose. This is obviously a designer's dream as there are infinite possibilities, but this issue we're facing needs to be looked at on a macro level. Let the market take it's course and not try to reinvent something that was flawed in the preliminary planning stages. The best use I can see with an abandoned big box is reusing the building materials for a quality infill development in a dense, urban area and giving the land back to nature. Brian On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:45 AM, Matt Hohmeister public.gmane.org> wrote: [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Re: recycling big-box stores

Matt Hohmeister — 2008-11-17T23:45:30

I find this quite interesting because because I'm interested in how to convert existing areas to carfree without having to demolish existing structures. I'm also not exactly a fan of eminent domain, so I'd rather not use that to make carfree development. If an area becomes carfree, land prices per square foot will go up considerably; I think the developers converting big boxes would be happy to sell off strips through their property to make public streets. A single existing big-box property would probably be turned into several blocks: the big box itself on its own block, with all other blocks ranging in sizes from 200 to 400 feet on a side. These streets would probably range in width from 10 to 100 feet, so it wouldn't exactly be a loss to the property owner. I know that a property owner could easily just build their own streets on their carfree property, but that's not the point. Privately owned streets mean that the owner can dictate terms of use; I don't call it publicly accessible unless it's publicly accessible 24*7 with no restrictions aside from causing a nuisance or danger. --- In carfree_cities-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org, "J.H. Crawford" ...> wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303039.html?hpid=topnews What's in Store?

recycling big-box stores

J.H. Crawford — 2008-11-16T20:36:59

Hi All, This is moderately interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303039.html?hpid=topnews Best, Joel Big Box & Beyond Today's Temples of Consumption Don't Have To Be Tomorrow's Ruins. What's in Store? By Joel Garreau Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 16, 2008; Page M01 For the purposes of this morning's discussion, the amazing thing about the Spam Museum -- as in the meat product -- is not that it exists. It's that it was created out of an abandoned Kmart. "The renovation of the Kmart building into what you see here today has the drama of a great epic," says Julie Craven, publicity representative for Spam in Austin, Minn. "We are going to be in this building for a long, long time. . . . We love it here." This report comes to you courtesy of Julia Christensen, a 32-year-old artist whose book, "Big Box Reuse," is being published this month by MIT Press. Its news is that those who gaze at the big-box stores of Rockville Pike or Manassas and fail to see future cathedrals, museums or artists' communities have no sense of history. Or imagination. This lesson looms because we're going to have to figure out what to do with a whole lot of big boxes, and soon. There are thousands of them -- vast prairies of Targets and Bed Bath & Beyonds and Costcos and Home Depots. Wal-Mart alone has 4,224 in the United States, more than half of them Supercenters into which, on average, you could comfortably fit four NFL football fields. The supply is growing, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. "Big-box space" continues to capture "the largest share of new additions to U.S. retail space," according to its April report. Yet consumer tastes are fickle, gas prices unpredictable, and some chains like Circuit City are on the ropes. Will people want more walkable village-like shopping experiences? Will they prefer to have their goods delivered via the Internet? No real estate trend is forever. Which is why it is beyond time to start thinking creatively about what to do with all the big-box stores in our burbs that become unsuited to their original function long before they physically wear out. This inspired The Washington Post to assemble a small team of artists, architects, engineers and developers to think creatively about what to do with these, our most common, underrated and increasingly available major buildings. Let your imagination soar. So what if big boxes seem at first glance like bridesmaids' dresses -- big, ugly and not a whole lot you can use them for. At second glance, with some alterations they can be made to seem so promising. As the celebrated novelist John Cheever wrote about his beloved suburbia: "For these are not as they might seem to be, the ruins of our civilization, but are the temporary encampments and outposts of the civilization that we -- you and I -- shall build." Big Boxes Packed With Possibilities People have been turning stables into apartments, warehouses into offices and palaces into churches since the dawn of fixed settlement. Even our nursery rhymes celebrate adaptive reuse -- "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe." We hardly remember how loathed and reviled were some ancient buildings before they were reprogrammed. We no longer pause to wonder which genius first looked at those "dark satanic mills" of New England's evil textile past and thought, "Hey, those would make great yuppie condos." Neither do we marvel at the unrecorded hero who first looked at those dangerous, aptly named sweatshops south of Greenwich Village and said, "Hey, those would make great artists' lofts." Which ultimately would be transformed into the pricey, trendy neighborhood called SoHo. In the burbs, however, adaptive reuse of humble, workaday structures still rattles our brains. The problem there is the history of this built environment. There is little -- at least until recently. In "Big Box Reuse," Christensen looks at the astonishingly imaginative people looking at obsolete Kmarts and Wal-Marts and saying, "Hey, those would make a great church." Or a go-cart race course. (Really!) Or the site for a courthouse. ("Law-Mart.") etc... ----- ### ----- J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities mailbox-WdiPhmTxsBdBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org http://www.carfree.com

Re: No Auto Industry Bailout Redux - Thomas Freidman's rant

Ron Wolf — 2008-11-15T20:39:16

It will be preaching to the choir here, but Thomas 'Green' Freidman's (I made up the 'Green' part) recent rant against the auto company bailout is wondefully sensible and outraged. you can find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12friedman.html In summary, we could find a lot better places to put the money to work than with these guys who have been messing up for, basically, my entire adult life. Send the money to Silicon Valley, invest in green, give it to people who know how to innovate. And stop funding this damaging industry and the narrow minded self-interest-at-any-cost people who run it. _______Ron Wolf

Parking Meters & Bicycling

Richard Risemberg — 2008-11-14T00:46:08

The following blog post developed rather suddenly over the course of the last hour, after I'd written to my local councilmember in regard to the removal of parking meters on Larchmont Boulevard (to be replaced by pay stations) and its effect on bike parking. http://www.bicyclefixation.com/blog/archives/00000243.html Pretty good news in my book. Rick -- Richard Risemberg Bicycle Fixation http://www.bicyclefixation.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Re: California economy loses $28 billion yearly to health effects of pollution

Simon Baddeley — 2008-11-14T00:06:51

My dear cyberfriend Richard My reactions to your election: http://democracystreet.blogspot.com/search?q=pennsylvania Best Simon Simon & Linda Baddeley 34 Beaudesert Road Handsworth Birmingham UK On 13/11/08 23:58, "rickrise-ihVZJaRskl1bRRN4PJnoQQ< at >public.gmane.org" public.gmane.org> wrote: [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

gmane.politics.activism.carfree-cities

Re: "Cars Are the New Smoking"

London congestion charge zone to be halved

Re: "Cars Are the New Smoking"

Crowd-Source a Car-Free Documetary?

"Cars Are the New Smoking"

in case you thought you had anything to be thankful for

free public transport

Cycling Boom in London

oil

Las Catalinas - (Nearly) Car Free town under development in Costa Rica

Fwd: VTPI News  Traffic Safety Special Edition

45 Days in Jail for Driver who Rode Around with Cyclist on the Hood of his Car

Re: recycling big-box stores

Progress in New York City

Re: Re: recycling big-box stores

Re: Re: recycling big-box stores

Re: recycling big-box stores

recycling big-box stores

Re: No Auto Industry Bailout Redux - Thomas Freidman's rant

Parking Meters & Bicycling

Re: California economy loses $28 billion yearly to health effects of pollution

Fwd: VTPI News Traffic Safety Special Edition