That’s right, car-free living is in the news this week. The New York Times featured a story, “Is Happiness Still That New Car Smell?” by Micheline Maynard about the increasing trend of people going car-free because of the recession. Maynard writes, “The recession and a growing awareness of the environment are causing many people to…
I used to run a few miles every morning. On the rare days I didn’t run, I swam laps, played tennis, hiked in the woods, or went on a bike ride. And I owned a library of yoga and pilates DVDs. These days I hardly even think about exercise, and the tennis rackets and workout…
(The third in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.) Suburban sprawl has been the dominant development pattern for the last fifty years. By 2000, more people lived in suburbs than in cities, small towns, and the countryside combined. Most of these suburbs were built after 1950 to accommodate the automobile,…
Imagine a suburb with no cars. No traffic jams. No drive ways. No garages. Vauban, Germany, a suburb of Freiburg, is pioneering this revolutionary concept. The 5,500 residents of Vauban are not forbidden from owning a car. But they must purchase a parking space in a shared garage at the edge of the development for $40,000. 70% of the residents do…
May is National Bike Month! Oh bikes, how I love thee. Let me count the reasons….. 10. Bikes are quiet. You’ll never get woken up at midnight, because your teenage neighbor’s revving his bike engine. And imagine if they replaced that freeway next to your house with a seven-lane bike path. 9. You can cart…
These are just a few of the headlines that blared off Google’s News feed last week: “World economy to shrink by 1-2 percent in 2009” “Unemployment rises in 99.7 percent of metro areas” “Rescuing the Economy Just Got Harder”. Pass the St. John’s wort, please. It’s hard not to despair about the state of the…