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The End of the Roads
Bryn Davidson, GOOD Magazine
We have as much road capacity today as we will ever need.
In my efforts to get Portland, Oregon’s Peak Oil Task Force, [which identifies problems and solutions related to dwindling oil supplies], into Vancouver, I’ve run up against hurdles from the business community as well as from the climate community. So I’ve been really interested in saying, “Okay, how do we collectively start to get past our differences and focus on the commonalities?”
If we are investing in efforts on climate strategies that do nothing to address oil dependence, then we are really missing an opportunity to be strategic about how we use time and money. Energy security is important; emissions and climate change are important; but let’s prioritize those strategies that address both. In terms of what we do immediately, we should be focusing on strategies that reduce both emissions and oil dependence.
When you start to look at peak oil and climate change, it all comes down to how quickly they happen. Technology plays a big role, but it doesn’t get us all the way. Part of what I am trying to do is to show the scale issues and the speed issues. It’s the idea that the energy transition isn’t just about technology; it isn’t just about cultural transformation; it isn’t just about the economy or anything else. It’s about all of these things together, and how quickly they change.
On the transportation side, I look at our history of investing in infrastructure. We spent (and are spending) billions and billions of dollars creating the interstate-highway system, and increasing the size of our airports and ports. There is this default assumption that we are going to keep growing those things bigger and bigger, off into whatever kind of future we imagine. I protest that sort of assumption—that everything we are doing is about getting bigger and bigger.
Ultimately, sustainability means coming to terms with natural biophysical limits. So we have to get past this idea of planning around extrapolation of past trends. That the future may be different than the past is the first thing that we need to come to terms with. This is where the idea of peak roads comes in: If we can say to ourselves, “We have as much road capacity today as we will ever need,” then we can start to ask what that means in terms of how we should actually start designing our cities. This shouldn’t be thought of as a default “anti-roads” statement. But our numerical models show that we simply may not have enough fuel (and biofuel, and electric cars) to use more road capacity than what we have today.
If we can start to grapple with the fact that we can actually get better instead of getting bigger, then we have started on the path towards sustainability. And I think until we can really wrap our heads around that we are fighting an uphill battle.
(7 April 2009)
Go Out and Play With the City: Matt Jones’s Demon-Haunted World
Sarah Kuck, WorldChanging
Pressing his finger firmly against the rapid heartbeat of urban intellectual infrastructure, designer Matt Jones has created a stunning slideshow on informatics that takes a look at all the things that make cities alive that you can’t see with the naked eye. These are the conversations, signals and patterns that we are constantly creating, and are now enhancing, mapping and transforming with innovative software technology.
In his presentation, The Demon-Haunted World, he takes a look at the magical things that can happen when people mesh software with cities. This slideshow is chock-full of Worldchanging ideas, many of which we’ve written about before (see our archives for more on: guerrilla gardening, Street As Platform, Biomapping, OpenStreetMap, Everyblock, Fix My Street, and Feral Robot Dogs).
My favorite part of clicking through this slideshow (other than the comparison between the OpenStreetMap paths through London and Neuron Pathways on slides 63 and 64), is seeing how people are taking hold of software and using it to explore their world and make it a better place. As Jones says, the future is transparent, open, sustainable, and up to us.
The Demon-Haunted World
(7 April 2009)
Vacancies at U.S. Retail Centers Hit 10-Year High, Reis Says
Hui-yong Yu, Bloomberg
Vacancies at U.S. malls and shopping centers rose to their highest in more than 10 years as consumer spending fell and stores closed in the recession, according to first-quarter data released today by Reis Inc.
More empty stores and lower rents are ahead “unless conditions change dramatically,” said Victor Calanog, director of research at the New York-based real estate research firm. He forecast the declines would last through next year.
“This outlook assumes positive job growth and an increase in consumer spending beginning in early 2010,” Calanog said in a statement.
(8 April 2009)
Tollway Investment Woes in Brisbane, Australia
Neal Woolrich, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
BrisConnections fights investor revolt
Embattled toll-road builder BrisConnections has been dealt another legal setback after the Victorian Supreme Court ordered the company to stop cold-calling unit holders ahead of next week’s meeting to decide on the company’s fate.
Transcript
ALI MOORE: The embattled toll road builder BrisConnections has been dealt another legal setback as it fends off an investor revolt.
The Victorian Supreme Court has ordered the company to stop cold calling unit holders ahead of a meeting next week to decide whether to wind up the group.
Now the authorities have launched their own response to concerns about partly paid securities, introducing a new disclosure regime. Neal Woolrich reports.
NEAL WOOLRICH: As work continues on Brisbane’s airport link, back in Melbourne the court battle resumes to decide the fate of the road’s builder, BrisConnections.
(4 April 2009)
EB contribuor Stuart McCarthy writes:
Here’s an interesting follow-up to a story you posted on EB a while back – Many Brisconnections shareholders facing financial ruin – ABC (confluence of energy and financial crises)
7:30 Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Many small time investors in the recently floated company Brisconnections could face financial ruin after discovering the shares they purchased are to be paid for over three instalments. Many investors bought into the company when the share price plummeted from $3 to just a mere tenth of a cent believing they were snapping up a bargain. Now, investors face bills running into millions of dollars when the next dollar per share payment is due in April, a liability they claim was never spelled out to them.
