Ideas, inspirations and discussionson creating better, smarter cities

Walk To School? Bike? Not 87% of American Kids

What kind of world have we made when our families won’t let our kids walk or bike to school? Danger, fear, obesity, dependency.

End to Automobility?

‘In 10 years, there will be less automobility,’ Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, said in a recent interview. ‘It’s a simple limit to resources.’

And the sooner San Francisco [Portland and every other city, too] starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.” Package delivery, Kyoto style

Outdoor School in Oregon, A Good Cause in the 60s: A Good Cause Today. My involvement and two great videos

Watch Outdoor School on PBS. See more from Oregon Field Guide.

For me, it all started with a sticky bun. But, of course, it started much earlier with the first Outdoor School in Oregon in the 1960s and the story got complicated by Measure 5 property tax limitations and all that, but for me, it did start with a sticky bun…

The Success of Regulation–Salmon in the Willamette!

This morning on my commute into work I looked over the Willamette River and saw what to many Portlanders isn’t such an unusual sight–people fishing for salmon. And soaring above them a pair of ospreys, or fish hawks.

Restoring Nature One Yard At A Time

Urbanization doesn’t have to mean the loss of viable habitat for wildlife. Vast amounts of metropolitan areas are thinly settled, with single family homes on big lots — space for re-creating native habitat. In the Portland, Oregon region, the Audubon Society of Portland, Columbia Land Trust and Friends of Tryon Creek have teamed up to create a unique Backyard Habitat Certification Program. You can do it, too! Read on…

So Much Wasted Space (and money)

How many times have you heard someone say that buses and bike lanes are such wastes of money because they have seen them empty? And, of course, only running buses when they would be full would be like only opening roads for rush hour.

Bikes as Pedestrians: Osaka/Kyoto

Stepping out the door onto the sidewalk in Kyoto and Osaka can take a while to get used to with all the bicycles whirring by, sharing the usually tight space with crowds of pedestrians…

The Empire of the Auto: mini-documentary from Santiago Chile

Empire of the Automobile is a mini documentary made by BiciCultura of Santiago Chile. Includes the interesting data that recent studies by the Chilean Environment Ministry found that 70% of noise in Santiago is caused by traffic. And that more deaths come from auto-originating pollution than from traffic crashes (about 4,000 per year).

Calling Urban Visionaries/Activists Under 40

Vanguard Conference 2013 Vanguard conference June 10-12 | Cleveland, Ohio Vanguard, an annual conference hosted by Next City and held this year in Cleveland, gathers the country’s best and brightest urban advocates. Applications are due by April 26, 2013. Selected participants will be notified by May 1, 2013. The Vanguard class will be publicly announced [...]

The Evolution of Urban Mobility: a short photo essay from the streets of Portland