Posts Tagged ‘community’
Traffic Roundabout: Award-Winning Civic Space
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on February 1st, 2012
Source: City Parks Blog
Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects
From “A Design that Celebrates the People”: Normal, IL Traffic Circle Wins Smart Growth Award as New Civic Space” by Colleen Gentles:
[In December last year], EPA announced the winners of the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. We are excited to report that Normal, Illinois is the recipient of the award in the Civic Places category for their traffic roundabout.
We’ve written before about how the town’s new traffic circle has successfully managed traffic flow at a busy five-way intersection, diverted thousands of gallons of untreated stormwater away from the nearby creek, and become the town center by bringing residents together in an attractive public space. The more recent news is how the traffic roundabout is spurring local economic development with the construction of a multimodal transportation station adjacent to the circle, courtesy of a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Both the transportation hub, which will eventually have high-speed rail service and create an estimated 400-500 new jobs, and the circle take advantage of the town’s existing infrastructure, bus service, and the historic central business district to attract even more residents to the new town center.
“The one-third-acre roundabout does much more than move cars. It invites pedestrians with shade trees, benches, lighting, bike parking, green space, and a water feature. People have lunch, read, and play music, and the open space invites community gatherings such as a holiday caroling event. It is the anchor for a community-wide revitalization and is part of Uptown Normal’s LEED-ND Silver recognition.
A popular rails-to-trails conversion, the Constitution Trail, leads to and around the roundabout, helping both to revitalize Normal and to bring people from surrounding areas to Normal’s central district. A new Children’s Discovery Museum on the edge of the roundabout already receives over 140,000 visitors per year, and a hotel and conference enter have recently opened nearby. One indication of the success of the redevelopment is that property values in the district have increased by about 30 percent since 2004.” Smart Growth Awards
According to the short video, this traffic circle was almost banned to pedestrians. It’s a good thing town officials fought back. [Watching the video, it looks like there are weekly farmers markets held on the roundabout too. KA]
Read more about the project here, as well as the other winners from the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.
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The roundabout was designed by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects. Check out their site for more photos and project details.
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Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects
Thriving Neighbourhoods 2012: Call for papers
Posted in Models, Research, seeking by Kate Archdeacon on January 26th, 2012
Thriving Neighbourhoods is a conference on emerging approaches to the planning, design and management of local neighbourhoods that are set to radically improve health, social engagement, environmental quality and productivity in communities. Thriving communities have the resilience needed to adapt creatively to unexpected challenges such as climate change, population change, rapid technological change, social upheaval and economic crises.
The complexity of the systems involved in creating thriving communities poses difficult and challenging issues for planners, developers, managers and researchers. But the potential returns on the invested effort and resources are massive. Capturing these returns requires professional collaboration across policy sectors including health, planning, design, infrastructure, IT and the built and natural environments. Communities must also be engaged from the outset, recognising diverse cultural and individual needs.
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We invite papers and presentations on research and practice related to the challenge of creating and supporting thriving neighbourhoods and communities. Work to be presented may be related to the areas represented in the diagram below, on: the challenges; the processes of change and development; the specifics of place; the measurement of outcomes.
2 April 2012: Deadline for Abstracts (400 words)
28 May 2012: Abstracts acceptance notice
Find out more about submitting a paper.
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Community Renewable Energy Projects: UK
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on January 13th, 2012
Source: guardian.co.uk
River Bain Hydro photo © wonky knee
From “The communities taking renewable energy into their own hands” by Ed Mayo:
“Late last year we – Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group – published a new report which reveals the growing number of people who are choosing to start renewable energy co-operatives in their communities, against all the odds. What is exciting about the report is that it is the first and most comprehensive guide to what amounts to a new movement of communities who are taking action for greener energy into their own hands.
In a time of doom – when all talk is of cuts, unemployment and rising prices – this report highlights a different story. Despite, or maybe even because, of the wider economic woes, people across the UK are creating a co-operative movement for green energy. There are now 43 communities who are in the process of or already producing renewable energy through co-operative structures. They are set up and run by everyday people – local residents mostly – who are investing their time and money and together installing solar panels, large wind turbines or hydro-electric power for their local communities.
The report highlights a series of examples. Like Ouse Valley Energy Service Company, which is owned by 250 people who have installed solar panels on a local brewery. Or River Bain Hydro, which installed a hydro electric power generator in its local river with investment of £200,000 from around 200 people.”
[...]
Read the full article by Ed Mayo on the Guardian.
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The Rough Guide to Community Energy: Free book
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on January 9th, 2012
What can we do to create sustainability in our own communities? How can local people work together to save or generate energy and tackle climate change?
The Rough Guide to Community Energy has the answers. Packed full of practical advice and inspiring case studies, it covers:
- Local energy groups – how to set one up and keep its momentum going
- Types of project including solar, wind, hydro, biomass, CHP and energy efficiency
- Getting a project off the ground, from fundraising and planning to construction
- Real-world advice from successful groups all over the UK
Whether you’re looking for inspiration or you already have a local energy group, The Rough Guide to Community Energy will help you make your project happen.
>> Get your free copy.
Check out the Resources section at the back of the book for websites and further reading. KA
Insight: How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on December 28th, 2011
From “How the Dutch got their cycle paths” by Sarah Goodyear for Project for Public Spaces:
Given the reputation of the Netherlands as a cyclist’s paradise, you might think that its extensive cycling infrastructure came down from heaven itself, or was perhaps created by the wave of a magic wand. Not so. It was the result of a lot of hard work, including massive street protests and very deliberate political decision-making.
The video [click through below] offers vital historical perspective on the way the Netherlands ended up turning away from the autocentric development that arose with postwar prosperity, and chose to go down the cycle path. It lists several key factors, including public outrage over the amount of space given to automobiles; huge protests over traffic deaths, especially those of children, which were referred to by protesters as “child murder”; and governmental response to the oil crisis of the 1970s, which prompted efforts to reduce oil dependence without diminishing quality of life.
The Netherlands is often perceived as an exceptional nation in terms of its transportation policies and infrastructure. And yet there is nothing inherently exceptional about the country’s situation. As the narrator says at the end of the film, “The Netherlands’ problems were and are not unique. Their solutions shouldn’t be that either.”
Watch the video. It’s inspiring (“…it seems so simple”) and frustrating (“aaargh…it seems so simple!”) at the same time.
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FoodPool: Re-distribution at the neighbourhood scale
Posted in Models, Movements, Visions by Kate Archdeacon on November 18th, 2011
Via City Harvest
Photo by T Gibbison via flickr CC
About FoodPool:
Our backyards are home to a wealth of gardens and fruit trees, many of which bear more produce than the gardener can consume, or more at one time than is desired. Often people end up with piles of unwanted zucchini, plums falling off trees to rot on the ground, peas that grow old and hard before they can be picked and shelled, and other garden produce that goes to waste. At FoodPool, we see the “problem” of excess garden abundance as an opportunity! It is an opportunity to help provide those in need with fresh, ripe, homegrown produce. The only obstacle lies in linking growers with their hungry neighbors.
Our answer is FoodPooling. Our mission is to create small, local groups to gather backyard garden produce and deliver it to food banks and food pantries. These “FoodPools” are modeled on carpools – neighborhood based, easy to set up, and a big win for everyone involved! By creating numerous small, local groups, we feed our neighbors while strengthening our communities.
Through the influence of people like Michelle Obama, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and many others, more and more people are returning to growing fruits and vegetables in their yards. At the same time, due to a host of factors, there is an ever increasing number of Americans going hungry, eating food of questionable nutritional value, and without access to quality produce. Now more than ever there is a real need for a garden produce donation program on a national scale – hence, FoodPool.
There are already groups gleaning produce in various places – groups whose work we heartily applaud. What makes FoodPool different from existing organizations that gather and donate fruit and/or vegetables is our goal of actively building a network of new gleaning groups in places where they don’t already exist. We seek to spread the notion of assisting the hungry with backyard produce through promotion of this FoodPool “brand” on a national scale.
Find out more on the FoodPool website.
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Human Microphones: Mass Word of Mouth
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on October 19th, 2011
Via No Tech Magazine
Photo by Mat McDermott via flickr CC
From We Are All Human Microphones Now by Richard Kim:
Anyone who’s been down to Occupy Wall Street and stayed for a General Assembly will instantly recognize the call and response that begins, and frequently interrupts, each meeting.
“Mic check?” someone implores.
“MIC CHECK!” the crowd shouts back, more or less in unison.
The thing is—there’s no microphone. New York City requires a permit for “amplified sound” in public, something that the pointedly unpermitted Occupy Wall Street lacks. This means that microphones and speakers are banned from Liberty Plaza, and the NYPD has also been interpreting the law to include battery-powered bullhorns. Violators can be sentenced for up to thirty days in prison. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Liberty Plaza is not actually a public park. It’s privately owned by Brookfield Office Properties, landlords to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, and in addition to amplified sound, they’ve also sought to ban sleeping bags, tents and other equipment from what they call “Zuccotti Park.”
So despite all the attention given to how Twitter, Facebook and livestream video have helped spread the word, the heart of the occupation is most definitely unplugged. But the protesters aren’t deterred one bit; they’ve adopted an ingeniously simple people-powered method of sound amplification.
After the mic check, the meeting proceeds:
with every few words?/?WITH EVERY FEW WORDS!
repeated and amplified out loud?/?REPEATED AND AMPLIFIED OUT LOUD!
by what has been dubbed?/?BY WHAT HAS BEEN DUBBED!
the human microphone?/?THE HUMAN MICROPHONE!!! (jazz hands here).
The overall effect can be hypnotic, comic or exhilarating—often all at once. As with every media technology, to some degree the medium is the message. It’s hard to be a downer over the human mic when your words are enthusiastically shouted back at you by hundreds of fellow occupiers, so speakers are usually pretty upbeat (or at least sound that way). Likewise, the human mic is not so good for getting across complex points about, say, how the Federal Reserve’s practice of quantitative easing is inadequate to address the current shortage of global aggregate demand (although Joe Stiglitz valiantly tried on Sunday), so speakers tend to express their ideas in straightforward narrative or moral language. [...]
Read the full article by Richard Kim. Check out Occupy Melbourne.
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Community Power Conference: Australian communities taking charge of their energy use
Posted in Events, Research by Kate Archdeacon on October 12th, 2011
Are you looking for practical, achievable ways to reduce the impact of electricity price rises in your community? The Community Power Conference: Australian Communities Taking Charge, aims to showcase how regional Australian communities: are developing innovative energy projects, helping to reduce local economic shocks can take practical action to hedge against rising energy prices.
14 -15 November, The Capital – Bendigo Performing Arts Centre, View Street, Bendigo
The Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities, in its third biennial conference on renewable energy, is partnering with the Central Victoria Solar City project, part of the Australian Government’s Solar Cities program, and the City of Greater Bendigo, to deliver an exciting exploration of current energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies and actions being taken by Australian communities. This conference will show your community what it can do with regard to:
- more efficient use of energy in homes and businesses
- more effective demand management to smooth peak energy loads, and
- developing local, renewable energy generators embedded within the national distribution network.
The conference will bring together leaders in the renewable energy industry including government, industry associations and communities which have adopted sustainable strategies built on innovative, renewable energy business models. Speakers will engage with community and municipality leaders:
- Outlining and developing comprehensive strategies for local and regional energy sustainability (identifying appropriate business models, overcoming policy barriers, engaging your community, knowing your technology options);
- Showcasing examples of regional communities that have already, or are in the process of putting such strategies in place; and,
- Reviewing and developing communities’ local and regional energy sustainability policy and programs.
If your community is facing increased energy costs and you would like to learn how to address this issue at the local level then this conference can help you. Follow the link below for more information.
www.centralvictoriasolarcity.com.au/special-projects/communitypower
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Edges and Social Spaces: City Design
Posted in Models, Opinion by Kate Archdeacon on September 28th, 2011
Source: Sustainable Cities Collective
Photo by Chuck Wolfe
From “Confronting the Urban Mirror” by Chuck Wolfe:
To my mind, one of the most compelling features of a provocative urban environment is a place where people watch people—which becomes a small-scale human observatory. Such places are often indicative of safe public environments, including active streets, corners and squares. They are particularly prevalent in cultures where neighbors readily interact, and the seams between public and private are softer than zoning setbacks, while still allowing for a private world.
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The sustainable cities we seek should include small places, where, as here, when the bustle of life begins in the morning and evening, people interact with facets of the city around them. I suspect that workable density, in the city of the future, will abound with the types of spaces readily ascertainable from cities of the past. We need places where we sit on the edges of the public realm and look in the mirror, to be reminded of who we really are.
Read the full article and check out the delightful photos by Chuck Wolfe on Sustainable Cities Collective.
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Restoring a River and its Wildlife: People Power
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on September 14th, 2011
Source: guardian.co.uk
Photo by danielbradberry via flickr CC
From “Yorkshire’s revived river Aire is a lesson in people power” by Peter Lazenby:
News that Britain’s once foully polluted rivers are achieving levels of cleanliness and wildlife occupation not seen since the industrial revolution is to be welcomed. But credit for this cannot be claimed only by the government’s environment agency and anti-pollution legislation. Behind many of the improvements lies people power – the mobilisation of individuals and organisations to force polluters to clean up their act. In the 1980s and 90s, that is exactly what happened in my part of the world, industrial west Yorkshire.
The river Aire starts out as a healthy river in the Yorkshire dales, springing from beneath a limestone cliff known as Malham Cove, where falcons nest. By the time it wound its way through Bradford and Leeds, some 50 miles downstream, it had received the industrial waste of textile, chemical and engineering industries, plus the domestic waste of more than a million people. The pollutants killed off the river’s oxygen supply.
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In the 1980s, a group was formed called Eye on the Aire. Its volunteers brought together more than 30 organisations with an interest in the river. They included community groups representing people living near its banks, conservation and environmental organisations, sporting groups such as rowing clubs, local councils and companies such as Tetley’s brewery, which had a riverside location. For a decade the group campaigned to press Yorkshire Water to install an extra level of filtration at its sewage works – tertiary treatment. The system involves the filtering of already treated sewage effluent through pebbles and increasingly fine layers of sand. It took a decade to win the campaign, which included the harnessing of government influence and action by the environment department.
Yorkshire Water installed the tertiary treatment at a cost of millions of pounds. The effluent it produced was often as clean as the fresh river water into which it passed. The effect was near miraculous.In the late 1990s, more than a decade ahead of much of the rest of Britain, otters, heron and other wildlife began to return to the river Aire in the heart of industrial Leeds. Salmon appeared in the lower reaches, blocked only by weirs and other obstacles. Water passes will eventually allow them to reach spawning grounds in the Yorkshire dales where they have not been seen in more than two centuries.
There was an economic spin-off. The Aire in Leeds had been part of a comprehensive canal and river transport network in the days before rail. Its city riverside was littered with semi-derelict warehouses and factories not used in decades. No one wanted to invest in and develop buildings adjacent to a stinking open sewer. The restoration of the river to life changed all that. Today the Leeds waterfront thrives with homes, restaurants, bars and markets. The Aire hosts an annual water festival.
The driving force behind the return to life of the river was Eye on the Aire, an organisation made up of ordinary people with determination and a belief in their cause. We should remember their example in the face of future struggles.
Read the full article by Peter Lazenby for the Guardian
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