News

Rediscovering Simplicity: The Cyclists of Italy (a photo diary)

by citisven

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 02:40:37 PM PDT

Whenever I travel to different countries and cities, one of the things I'm interested in is how locals move around in their daily lives. Call me a transportation glutton, but I'm a sucker for trains, boats, rickshaws, trams, buses, gondolas, back alleys, and sidewalks.Then, of course, there's the most sublime transit invention of them all: the bicycle. It's so simple — even a non-techie like myself understands how it works — and yet so deliciously useful, relieving traffic, getting you anywhere quickly, reducing CO2, keeping you in shape, letting you see a place and interact with its people.    One thing I noticed on my trip to Italy a few months ago was how much bikes were part of everyday life. With David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries as my companion I strolled through the streets of cities and towns, trying to capture the mundane beauty of cycling.

• citisven's diary :: ::

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in changing the ways we move around, eat, or do business, is the common perception that living a less fossil fueled life means sacrifice and inconvenience, even drudgery. In the case of the bicycle, the danger factor is often added to the list of reasons of why it would be such a bad idea to get out of our cars.

July 2010 Editorial

Justice is a concept of great importance to all of us working for a better world. It is fundamental to theories of social order. Studies show that the sense of justice may be instinctual to our nature. Today, calls for justice are getting louder - calls for social justice, climate justice, environmental justice, economic justice, the list goes on.But in a world already sorely out of balance, with globalization transcendent, and with corporations controlling much of the world's resources and distribution systems, in some circumstances it can be difficult to know from whom to demand justice. The gap between the "haves" and "have nots" is getting more disproportional; unraveling the causes of fundamental injustices can lead to truths some of us would rather not face.

June 2010 Editorial

Here at Ecocity Builders we try to stay focused on the positive even as bad news keeps rolling in - gigantic man-made disasters, wars, natural disasters increasing, corruption increasing, economic collapse, species going under, international laws and treaties being targeted and dismantled, world getting hotter, weather patterns changing, polar caps melting, fewer jobs, less support and money for education, less money for basic services, world leaders not leading.

Metropolian Area Transformation

A friend wrote recently saying she wasn’t aware of “ecovillages” that had a strong edge between higher density full community and immediately adjacent open space. Since I think the visual image of such an arrangement is so interesting and important, I’ll just record my response here.Thanks for your note and observation. I have seen some regular villages, not self-consciously ecovillages, that are extremely compact, in China in the 3 story range, in Turkey and Nepal in the six story range, with natural, grazing and/or agricultural land or waters immediately next door. City walls up against open space. There is Tori Superiori in Italy where a group of people hoping to create a self-conscious ecovillage purchased this almost single structure hyper compact small medieval village. Looks fascinating. I'd love to visit.