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Peak oil and solutions on NPR (Albert Bates interview) (Audio)
Guy Rathbun, “An Evening With” on KCBX
Former public interest attorney and environmentalist Albert Bates discusses his book, The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times..
Subjects addressed: the slope of the curve, urban permaculture, petro-product ubiquity, Lovelock’s worst case, climate mitigation by massive desert reforestation propelled by coastal desalination run on wind and tidal energy, fireside chats, tortilla wars, permafuels, politicians with toes in the water, rain barrels and root cellars, Cuba, the Classic Inca civil society, food substitutions, and surfer lifestyles.
(18 July 2007)
More on Albert Bates on Energy Bulletin:
Albert Bates, guide for our post-petroleum, globally warmed future by Jan Lundberg
Intentional community pioneer Albert Bates on surviving peak oil by Erik Curren
Even more.
Adams sees web of streetcars for Portland
Dylan Rivera, Portland Oregonian
…The Portland Streetcar, long considered a downtown transit and redevelopment tool, could reach disparate parts of the city under a vision described on Friday by City Commissioner Sam Adams in a speech to the Portland City Club. The commissioner oversees the Portland Office of Transportation, which is developing a 30-year rail transit plan for the city, with implications for the metro area.
…”What would Portland look like if we implemented solutions to global warming and peak oil?” Adams said. “It would look a lot like Portland circa 1920, a time when the main means of motion were your feet, streetcars and bikes.”
The rail transit vision for the region was just one factor in a wide-ranging speech on transportation that Adams portrayed as an overwhelmed, underfunded system with a dire backlog of delayed maintenance.
“Portland’s streets are killing and injuring people despite the fact that we know how to make them safer,” Adams said. “We have lacked adequate funds to implement safety solutions, to enforce traffic laws and educate road users.”
The speech, titled “From here to there in tomorrow’s Portland,” provided Adams’ vision for the city’s transportation needs decades into the future. The ballroom of civic activists at The Governor Hotel could have been forgiven for confusing it with a campaign address. Adams is known to be considering higher office, and big visions decades in the making are some of the ingredients that can inspire others to think of a city official as mayoral or congressional in stature.
(21 July 2007)
Contributor Jeffrey Brown writs:
Alan Drake will be speaking on this issue at ASPO-USA Houston. IMO, he will be giving the most important presentation of the whole meeting.
Smart Cities: rethinking the city centre (51-page PDF)
Smart State Initiative, Queensland Government
Executive Summary:
Currently, population and development growth in South East Queensland is managed under the South East Queensland Regional Plan 2005-2026 which promotes both urban consolidation of the city centre and decentralisation into new urban centres in and outside Brisbane. The expectation is that Councils will prepare strategic development plans for each identified growth area.
However, in the Brisbane City Centre the Council has now identified some 30 separate growth areas, all being planned independently, some under Council and others under State Government jurisdiction, some well advanced and others yet to commence planning. This fragmented approach is unlikely to generate a ‘smart city’.
This report calls for the identification of an holistic vision and structure for the city centre aimed at:
• generating public awareness and confidence that Brisbane is evolving as a smart city.
• dramatically and innovatively enhancing connectivity throughout the city centre.
• collocating residential and commercial growth with knowledge precincts.
• creating a ‘knowledge corridor’ through the city centre.
• manifesting connectivity in ways which will impart the city with a powerful identity integrating the knowledge economy with subtropical lifestyle.
(May 2007)
Recommended by AlanfromBigEasy in a comment at TOD:
Good Urban Planning Primer — A proposal for Light Rail in Brisbane gives a good case study in Urban Planning around non-oil transportation (ped & light rail, weak on bicycling). Worth reading for an overview of the thought process (well written IMO).
