5 Butterfly Species Just Vanished While No One Was Looking
motherjones.comAn entomologist looked for six years and concluded that five rare Florida butterflies are now extinct.
Waianae Elders Unhappy With Berg on 'Purple Spot'
Environmentally-inclined Leeward Oahu community members are unhappy with what they call “flip-flopping” by their Honolulu City Council representative, Tom Berg.
The issue is controversial industrial zoning in the proposed update to a key regional planning document. The Concerned Elders of Waianae blasted out an email Thursday announced a “community accountability session” for 6:30 p.m. tonight to discuss the matter. Here’s some of that email:
After overwhelming community opposition to the so-called “purple spot” industrial zone proposed in the latest Wai`anae Sustainable Communities Plan, Councilman Berg had told Wai`anae residents he would amend the plan to remove the spot and protect this farming community from urban sprawl. Yet, days before the final Committee meeting on the plan, there is still no amendment to remove the spot and Wai`anae’s voters want to know why.
Councilmember Berg has accepted the Concerned Elders’ invitation to the meeting and is expected to be there to answer hard-hitting questions from his constituents.
The final committee meeting on the Wai`anae Sustainable Community Plan is expected to be held on February 9, 2012 at Honolulu Hale. Third and final reading of the plan by the full city council is scheduled for Wednesday February 15, 2012 at 10 AM at Kapolei Hale.
America's first climate refugees
guardian.co.ukIt’s a choice confronting more than 180 native communities in Alaska, which are flooding and losing land because of the ice melt that is part of the changing climate.
In a special three part series on the imminent crisis, the Guardian has visited Newtok and spoken to the villagers, politicians and climate scientists about their plight. You can
The Guardian covers “climate refugees” in America.
Encourage The Private Sector To Create Public Amenities
urbanomnibus.net“Urban design, to me, is the connectivity between buildings and places. It could be the subway or a building, but it’s those places that connect, whether vertically or horizontally. And it’s not just in urban centers. If you look at villages around the world, I think what makes a good rural or suburban public place is the relationship between the village and the natural environment. In cities, I think the relationships between open spaces and buildings is what makes more “urban-ness.” It’s like a necklace — if you don’t have the string that threads in between, the necklace falls apart.”
Getting around: 'Cutting dependence on cars isn't anti-car, it's common sense'
greatergreaterwashington.org
From Greater Greater Washington:
The central fact about cars, from a planner’s perspective, is that they take up space. Lots of space. And this matters because space in cities (a.k.a real estate) is scarce and therefore expensive.
Cars take up space when they’re moving and they take up space when they’re parked, and even though they can’t be simultaneously moving and parked, you have to plan for both states and plan for peak demand; so you have to set aside some multiple of the real estate actually occupied by the car at any given time.
That’s just a practical observation about the spatial geometry of cities that doesn’t bow to my ideology or yours. And it would still remain true even if cars ran on nothing but recycled newspapers and emitted nothing but rainbows and unicorn tears.
In the past, our policy response has been to just set aside more and more space for cars: More freeways, more roads, more lanes on existing roads, more parking garages and surface lots. This approach hasn’t worked, and there are two very practical reasons why:
First, you can never build enough. There’s a phenomenon called “induced demand” that is very well understood by now. A new lane or a new freeway never reduces congestion in the long run: People respond to new capacity by driving more or by living or working in previously remote places, and you’re very quickly back where you started and have to build still more. The same phenomenon applies to increases in the supply of parking. It’s a game you can’t win.
Second, when you do make more space for cars you quickly start to crowd out any other potential mode of transportation, especially walking. All those parking lots and freeways and roads spread everything else out so that the distances become too great for walking. And the more you optimize any given space for cars the more hostile that space is for pedestrians. Very quickly you get to the point where it becomes impossible—or prohibitively depressing—to get things done on foot.
And this last fact has huge quality-of-life implications for human beings—not just because driving to a distant strip mall for a gallon of milk is less pleasant than walking to a corner store, but also because for many people driving simply isn’t an option.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Infographic source: Muenster Planning Office)
