Towards Carfree Cities: Spreading the wordSteven T. Jones reports from the Toward Carfree Cities conference in Portland
My head and two notebooks are filled with alarming indicators of the need for more people to go carfree and with innovative ideas for making that happen. The solutions range from facilities like the floating bicycle/pedestrian path on the eastside of the Willamette River…
…to technologies for making transit more accessible (such as online trip planners and the Nextbus system used by Muni, which San Francisco’s Michael Smith gave a presentation on yesterday) to key research (consultant Peter Jacobsen finds bikers and walkers are safer in large numbers: “There’s something going on with motorists behavior changing”) to sociopolitical movements, including the many freeway revolts around the U.S. (SF’s Jason Henderson moderated a session on that yesterday) and reclaim the streets pushes such as Critical Mass, depaving, and creative protests against expanded roadways.
Whew, that lightened my head a little bit, but there’s still just so much to say about carfree issues, which have only in recent years penetrated the mainstream consciousness. Bay Area residents Brian Smith and Jonathan Winston each maintain good blogs on the topic, and up here there’s the great BikePortland.org site and one from Canadian journalist Jude Isabella. But the standard these days is being set by the New York City Livable Streets Movement, which includes Streetsblog, Streetfilms, and the Open Planning Project.
And with stable funding from carfree-minded entrepreneur Mark Horton (who started the file-sharing service Limewire, among other things) and a desire to reach into more U.S. cities, Streetsblog is eyeing San Francisco and other California cities to expand its reach and impact.
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum, author/activist Chris Carlsson, and Streetsblog editor-in-chief Aaron Naparstek.
“It’s not just about transportation,” Streetsblog editor-in-chief Aaron Naparstek said of the movement he’s pushing. Instead, it’s about public spaces and resources and how best to use them. He rues how so much space in cities has been devoted to the circulation of automobiles and told the audience yesterday, “A city can be used for high purposes than that.”
He started as a bicyclist, activist, and freelance journalist living in NYC, but it is through Streetsblog that he and his allies have been able to help city officials there wake up to modern realities and begin creating more bike lanes and carfree spaces. “That’s really changed in the last year and we’ve helped make that change,” Naparstek said, adding, “We have an agenda and we’re open about that agenda."
He listed the goals of Streetsblog: advocacy journalism, highlighting best practices, amplifying the voice of advocacy organizations, framing issues for the mainstream press, supporting and strengthening allies, going after the bad guys, making arcane issues more accessible, and mobilizing communities.
Such a role is all the more important given how difficult it is to focus mainstream media attention on the myriad issues related to extensive automobile use. Even the hometown Oregonian and Portland Tribune newspapers have given the conference minimal press coverage, focused on the carfree lifestyle as an oddity rather than a growing imperative.
But between Streetsblog, cutting edge Streetfilms, the dozens of other blogs out there, and increasing attention from the Guardian and other progressive publications, the issues and ideas being discussed here will trickle more and more into the public consciousness.
Because it must.
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Comments (4)
The Bay Area-wide transit trip planner can be found here:
http://transit.511.org/
It works pretty well and also occasionally provides comic relief. For example, it just told me that my estimated travel time for an approximately 3 mile trip is 4 hours and 44 minutes.
This isn't the Trip Planner's fault, of course; it just shows we need expanded transit service, especially at night and on weekends.
Posted by Karen B. | June 20, 2008 12:37 AM
Recall that ballot propositions and Market/Octavia gave lily white Hayes Valley a new boulevard but saddled the poorer, North Mission with a brand new stinking darkening new freeway.
Freeway revolts are all wonderful and good, but if they are environmentally unjust, ecologically racist and classist, with white neighborhoods getting the goodies when they offload their nasties on poorer communities, then that is an indictment of those who brought us MO.
The Guardian has come around over the past decade on issues of environmental justice. Let's hope their coverage on blogs catches up to reflect that instead of ignoring that editorial stance in favor of promoting the writers' friends.
-marc
Posted by marc salomon | June 23, 2008 08:55 AM
Marc, your obsession with Market-Octavia and your overblown interpretation of its impacts has clearly blinded you. The Guardian does have a long history covering environmental justice issues (I wrote or edited many of those articles) and freeway revolts, which I mentioned briefly in this post using neutral language. I know that you don't like Jason (who I socialize with about as often as I have socialized with you, which is not that often), but you've really got to get over yourself if you expect to be taken seriously. Your anger is clouding your intellect, and your overwrought righteous indignation has become laughable.
Posted by Steven T. Jones | June 24, 2008 11:34 AM
marc is an angry conspiracy theorist. why anyone listens to his drivel is beyond me. he is a phony.
Posted by those dudes | August 28, 2008 12:15 AM