SCAN

Trolleybus open house rescheduled

2011-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

The trolleybus open house that I mentioned in the previous post has been rescheduled to April 27th. I still won't be able to make it, so I'm still looking for a correspondent to write about.

Trolleybus study for Seattle

2011-04-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

Update: the open house has been rescheduled to Wednesday April 27th (see below for details)

Here in Seattle, King County Metro is deciding whether to keep running trolley busses or replace them all with diesels. The current fleet, which serves 14 mostly high-frequency routes, is nearing the end of its useful life and the first replacement busses will probably be ordered next year. They may be replaced with diesel-electric hybrid busses (like the newer ones in the current fleet), or modern trolley busses like the model Vancouver's TransLink uses, which can run at least a few blocks off the wire, making them a lot more flexible than the current fleet.

On purely financial grounds, the decision depends on assumptions about the price of diesel. Trolley busses are more expensive to buy, and the network of overhead wires has some maintenance costs of its own, but plausible increases in the price of gas could make trolley busses cost competitive over their lifetime. The part that's interesting to me, though, is that Metro's evaluation criteria go a lot further, including:

Scheduling Efficiencies (trolleys can be badly disrupted by a traffic blockage, but they can also be run more efficiently because they don't need to go back to base to be refueled)
Noise
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (including from production of the busses)
Air Quality (again including from production)
Environmental Justice

This week Metro announced that they'll be holding a public meeting to discuss findings so far on Wednesday, April 27th from 5-7pm, at the Plymouth Congregational Church (1217 6th Ave, Seattle 98101).

Request for contributions: I won't be able to make that meeting because I'll be out of town. If anyone is willing to go and write about it for this blog, I'll be much obliged. I'm also interested in hearing from you if a local transit authority where you live[d] has gone through a similar process: what did they decide and why? If you're interested in contributing just email me.

Disclaimer: I have a personal stake in this because my home overlooks a busy bus street, so I'm really hoping that many more routes get turned into trolleys, giving me a quieter house and cleaner air.

London's Lost Rivers

2010-10-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

Every Londoner immediately recognises the River Thames on a map or aerial photo—not least because it's in the title sequence of one of Britain's most popular TV shows—but not everyone knows about the many tributaries to the Thames which have been buried over the years. London being a mixture of the Thames's historic floodplain (most of the centre) and rolling hills (most of the suburbs), in a famously rainy part of the world, it has a lot of small rivers. Their historical importance shows up in place names all over town, but many of them are entirely or partly hidden from view.

I've written before about how London has many admirable attributes of a sustainable city entirely by accident, and this is one of the things that would look very different if the Victorian builders of most of London's infrastructure had understood what the consequences would be. Each section of river that was built over or diverted into a culvert must have seemed like progress: one less inconvenient barrier to cross; one more road passable to carriages. But the whole is much less than the sum of its parts, and modern Londoners suffer from having lost the flood control that a naturally functioning watershed provides, and want the wildlife habitat and public amenities that they could have if the rivers were restored.

Today there is a significant restoration effort in progress, which has been very encouraging to watch. When I was in London in June I visited a few interesting sites, and over the coming week or two I'll write about a couple:

Daylighting the River Quaggy in Sutcliffe Park

Some of the surprising places where you can see long-concealed rivers

And some thoughts about similar work going on here in Seattle

Delhi & the Commonwealth Games 2010

2010-09-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

The city of Delhi means many things to many of us especially to the people of India. Our Nation’s capital is the seat of hectic political activity, the gateway to the rest of the country, the land of opportunities, and a transit point for many. Besides, Delhi has an extremely rich and a vibrant past that is substantial in its Old Monuments, which remind us of its heritage that dates back nearly 5,000 years. With its world-class flyovers, five star hotels, multiplexes, Metro Rail and now the newly opened Terminal 3 at the Indira Gandhi international Airport that meet international standards, Delhi has come a long way. Yet it is (with the rest of the India) far from being a perfect blend of the new and the old. While the coming up of MNCs in the city and its adjoining areas has opened channels for upward social mobility thereby producing a fleet of English speaking upper middle-class population, at the same time, they have also significantly widened the gap between the nouveau riches and the hopelessly poor leading to a fairly unstable society. Thus, on the one hand, where there is a world of unprecedented opulence for some, there is, on the other hand, persistent deprivation for many more that has made the narrower view of development (i.e. in terms of GNP, disposable income, industrialization, technological advancements etc.) nearly redundant in view of the inequalities that exist today. As rightly pointed out, development should be seen, as a process of expanding the real freedom that people enjoy, which includes health, education, food, clean drinking water, sanitation facilities, civil and political rights, and other basic rights that let people live with human dignity and self-worth. Anyway, with a lot of contrast that is easily discernable in the city today, Delhi is increasingly becoming the city of thieves and thugs, and of privileged few vs. the increasing percentage of population living below poverty line. The situation is further aggravated by our power-hungry leaders and corrupted politicians, who refuse to step on these shaky grounds, but on which they perhaps still believe they can create a steady economic power. One doesn’t have to wait for the future to see the outcome of this stark dichotomy – it is happening now.

Delhi is less than a week away from hosting the ‘queenly’ Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2010 (akin to Olympics), and the city has already been bombarded with severe criticism, both at home and outside. The reasons cited are varied and many that have been made worse by the frantic last-minute efforts of the Government to get the work done. There have been concerns with regard to hygiene, construction, security and disease in the city among the international community so much so that some high-profile athletes have pulled out from the Games. Even on the domestic front, CWG has not evoked much enthusiasm yet owing to reasons ranging from blatant corruption and massive miss-management of funds to dug-up roads, potholes and construction work that is rampant everywhere in the city at the moment, and will perhaps never even reach fruition. The verdict against the organizing committee and the Indian government seems justified as of now knowing how haphazardly they are working on fixing things at the eleventh-hour when they had close to seven years to plan and systematically execute work towards this fairly prestigious event. To top it all, the locals are made to bear the brunt with those at the lowest rungs of society being most affected. While for the majority of Delhi residents’ life has only got somewhat disturbed, the poorest of the lot have more or less lost their livelihood and homes to the Games wherein they will not even be invited.

Born and raised in Delhi, I was looking forward to this event for which my excitement grew when it was decided that Delhi will host the first ever Green CWG with a green vision, ‘to strive towards reducing carbon footprint and becoming the sustainable development benchmark for multi-disciplinary games in the future’. Looking back at the sporadic initiatives that were taken up in the last year or so, one cannot say that the city did not make any progress in the run-up to the Games – new routes for the Metro have been inaugurated that now cover a large part of Delhi; eco-friendly venues have been constructed; tree plantation drives have been carried out; the number of buses running on CNG have been increased, sustainable transportation rallies have been carried out etc. – but surely these efforts were skewed as usual.

The Delhi Metro has an average ridership of 900,000 commuters per day and runs at an operational profit
Image from Wikipedia

Moreover, the games village that has been constructed to house around 7,000 athletes turned the spotlight away from these ‘seemingly’ green initiatives of the city to getting a green signal from some countries for whether they would be a part of the Games. If only Delhi had realized that ‘it is futile to create islands of cleanliness and modernity for the rich, if they are to be surrounded by a sea of poverty, sickness and filth’. I cannot agree more with this statement.

The irony of the whole situation is that while sustainable development and green games were the self-imposed themes for CWG in Delhi, all that the organizing committee has been interested in is to merely keep ‘poverty’ under cover that entailed arresting/forcing the city beggars out of the streets, ousting the migrant workers from the city, prohibiting street vendors/hawkers from carrying out their business that by all means is the only source of livelihood for them, demolishing slum areas in a jiffy, seizing land for the construction of the stadiums, and hiding unimpressive areas from sight with large banners just to give a nice yet totally superficial impression of the city to our honored international visitors. Is that what is duly accomplished in the name of sustainable development and green games? Did the organizing committee not consider it worth their time to understand the vision well enough before embarking on their rather expensive cosmetic surgery? One wonders if this was the intention behind the organizing committee’s grandiose comments on showcasing urban sustainable development during the Games. There are so many questions and so many doubts arising out of what has turned out to be a big disaster for the image of Delhi, which is known to be the capital city of one of the largest democracies in the world. So much for democracy really.

For those interested in and working on sustainability, I’d say that this whole controversy on CWG in Delhi is hinting at a fundamental level problem about which something can be done, and that is, that perhaps there is a lack of understanding (or complete misunderstanding altogether) on important sustainability issues and consequent prioritization of initiatives, funds and efforts, whether out of choice or ignorance. Put differently, it leaves one wondering whether we are all on the same page when we talk about sustainable development and if we really know what the key priorities and levers for success are before launching our local & national level strategies. Over the next few weeks, I will write on the same lines on what I think should have been done in Delhi in retrospect to gear up for the Games. Optimistically speaking, the present state of affairs might have been necessary to serve as a reality check for India to re-orient its thought process and jump on a new learning curve that is better aligned with the development needs specific to the country.

[To exactly know what I am talking about perhaps it’ll be a good idea to look at some pictures of CWG in Delhi - http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTR2HWG7#a=62]

- Guest post by Gunita Bajaj

Mapping ethnic diversity

2010-09-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

Eric Fisher is at it again - this time he's made some maps to illustrate ethnic diversity in 40 U.S. cities. Here's Seattle:

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Each dot represents 25 people - Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, and Orange is Hispanic. The categories themselves come from the census, because that's the best available data. If you know Seattle reasonably well, there won't be any big surprises in this, but it's a very effective way to visualise the data and it can be interesting comparing other cities.

Community Indicators work in Truckee Meadows, NV

2010-09-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

[cross-posted from the main Sustainable Seattle blog]

The Community Indicators Consortium has been hosting a series of webinars about community indicators and performance measures. The overall arc has been about how some local governments have successfully integrated community indicator work into how they measure their own performance, which is of interest to us because we hope to achieve the same with b-Sustainable. I've listened to the first two and would recommend them to anyone else interested in this kind of work; they've also been kind enough to make recordings available online.

Yesterday's was a case study from Truckee Meadows Tomorrow. I took some notes, which reflect my own biases and interests but may be worth sharing:

The big impetus for starting their indicator work was a 1990s forecast of enormous population growth for the region - not unlike what PSRC is supposed to be preparing us for here
The first round of indicator development was done by giving participants monopoly money to "buy" indicators with, as a way of prioritising the most valued n indicators. Apparently they don't use that procedure any more, but it sounds better to me than the more standard focus groups they've switched to, because it gives the meekest person in the room as much of a voice as the loudest. I'd be interested to hear why they switched.
They're down to 33 indicators now, and even with those they have 10 quality-of-life categories that group things together, and they get feedback that the 10 categories are much easier to get a handle on than the 33 indicators.
The categories are: Arts & Cultural Vitality - Civic Engagement - Economic Wellbeing - Education & Lifelong Learning - Enrichment - Health & Wellness - Innovation - Land use & Infrastructure - Natural Environment - Public Wellbeing
In the past 5 years, they've made a special effort to reach "unusual suspects" - identifying communities not represented in the earlier focus group work and specifically recruiting them to add input.
Washoe County uses the QoL indicators to track its own performance.
A lot of the work they do on the basis of these indicators is done by partners of the counties - either volunteerism or compacts with companies - http://www.truckeemeadowstomorrow.org/collaborate/100

If this sounds interesting to you, I'd strongly recommend downloading the webinar from their site: http://www.communityindicators.net/post/events,cic-webinars-archive,truckee-meadows-tomorrow-and-washoe-county

Improving traffic by removing lights?

2010-08-23T10:37:00.001-07:00

Seattle Transit Blog posted something thought-provoking yesterday. Portishead, a small town in the Southwest of England, has run an apparently quite successful experiment with removing traffic lights from a problem intersection.

This isn't something for everywhere to copy. For a start, Portishead's a town of only 22,000 residents, so what works there won't necessarily scale up to a big city. Then there's the relative narrowness of urban British streets, compared with much of the world. It also wasn't an unqualified success for all users - the blind man's comments towards the end of the video are worth listening to. But it's an interesting exercise to think about how differently traffic could be handled, and whether a piece of infrastructure as ubiquitous as the traffic light may be helping us less than we think, because it encourages thoughtless behaviour.

What tourists see vs what locals see

2010-06-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Following up on the Geotaggers' World Atlas, Eric Fisher has dug deeper into the data to try to distinguish photos taken by tourists from those taken by locals. It illustrates the point about the difference between a relatively superficial tourists'-eye-view of a city and the real workings of it from the point of view of locals even better than the previous maps did, as you can see in the Seattle one:

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Tourists (those whose photos are all from within a month of each other) show up in red, locals in blue, and those who the algorithm couldn't place in yellow. The locals' photos still show a distinct concentration on the prettier parts of town, but they're dramatically wider ranging than the tourists'.

I am particularly conscious of this right now, because I am in London, a city where I'm halfway between a tourist and a local because I grew up here and come back to visit family and friends, but haven't lived here since I moved away for university. I've been collecting observations of the city from that perspective, and I'll write a few up over the next couple of weeks.

Madison, Wisconsin: Ride the Drive

2010-06-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

When you live in Wisconsin, you have to make the most of good weather while you've got it. Perhaps this is why Madison is known for its summer block parties that happen nearly every weekend May through September, ranging from small neighborhood affairs to annual events large enough to be profiled on Wikipedia.

Today, a number of major thoroughfares in downtown Madison were closed to car traffic for another sort of party: Ride the Drive. In the words of the organizers, "This community event is an invitation for all citizens to leave their cars behind to experience some of Madison’s most scenic byways a whole new way - by riding, walking, skating, or strolling along some of our city’s most beautiful streets." Perhaps importantly, some of these streets are ones that would be challenging, or even impossible, to bike on during normal traffic. Scattered along the 6-mile route were various attractions—stages with live music, vendor tents with food and information, and activities for families. Quirky Madison at its best.

I think one of the key aspects of making an event like this work is to try to get buy-in from constituencies not directly served. To that end I was pleased to see two important bits of information on the official event website: 1) a map of the detour, which crucially still allows traffic along and across the city's narrow isthmus; and 2), a Getting There page with information on how to participate if you don't live within walking or biking distance of the party. This last shows a welcome sensitivity to the class issues that I suspect underlie a lot of driver hostility toward cyclists (and perhaps even toward environmentalists in general). After all, living downtown has costs—financial and otherwise—that not everybody can afford.

Of course, effective communication also requires identifying the right channels, and I'm not sure whether city websites and posters in downtown business windows were enough to reach the people outside the choir, so to speak. It will be interesting to see whether today's street closures attract any negative attention this week from the car conservatives in town.

-Guest post by Erin McMullen Jonaitis

The intentionally sustainable city?

2010-05-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

I just saw an announcement for a symposium, in Portland in July, about the global trend of "eco-cities":

The debate about global climate change, increasing urbanisation and advances in technological innovation have given rise to a new, rapidly growing international phenomenon: eco-cities. This symposium aims to explore this new global phenomenon by discussing what we mean by ‘eco-cities’; why they have suddenly become so fashionable; whether they deliver on their promise to be more sustainable; and who decides where, when and how they are implemented. [more info]

I'm rather sad that I won't be able to go, because it clashes with our Triple Bottom Line Reporting workshop. More importantly, it got me thinking about just how new an idea it discusses; not just the label "eco-city", but the whole idea of deliberately planning urbanisation to be in some sense sustainable. I'm about to visit London, where I grew up, and it strikes me as a great example of a city where everything environmentally friendly (density, public transport, mixed-use streets, parks and tree cover, lack of a major highway through the middle) is the way it is for reasons other than planning for environmental benefit. There are green initiatives now, such as the congestion charge and the London Rivers Action Plan [PDF], but these are things that have been introduced within my lifetime.

It's not that the idea of sustainability is new. The old testament warns against wantonly cutting down trees, with a straightforward argument from self-interest, and we have a talk coming up about the Buddhist scriptures' angle on climate change. All that's new is seeing these ideas taken seriously in mainstream discourse—dare I say it, even becoming trendy—which is one of the reasons we're developing this blog. As cities around the world make unprecedented efforts to become sustainable, we all have a huge amount to learn from each others' experiences.

This trend is one of the things that gives me hope for the world.

The Geotaggers' World Atlas

2010-05-26T14:31:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting way of visualising part of the activity of a city: The Geotaggers' World Atlas by Eric Fisher. Eric has taken publicly available street maps of major cities, and overlaid them with traces of the locations from which people have taken geotagged photos. The result is a rather beautiful trace of the picture-taking activity through a city, which seems like a reasonable proxy for "where is open to the public and visually interesting".

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Looking at where is missing from these maps is also rather striking. For instance, Seattle has a river running through it, and that river is both an important industrial site and a tragic pollution dump. It's only a weak trace on the map because it isn't a scenic destination, but it's an important part of the story of Seattle. In the same way, in most of the mapped cities the majority of residences are off the photographed track. Looking at these maps, I'm painfully aware that in each of these cities that I have visited, excepting the two I've lived in (Seattle and London), I myself have barely left the heavily-tracked areas.

I don't have a huge point to make here, just that really knowing a city requires more than a tourist's-eye-view, because every city has important places that are not necessarily notable or tourist-inviting.

Creating a "third place" in commercial space

2010-05-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Today, I had the great pleasure of meeting the Interfaith Amigos, who will hopefully give a talk in our brownbag series later this year. The meeting was also a pleasure for a secondary reason, which is that they had me come to their 'office'. They don't have a private office - they meet at the Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park. Third Place Commons is a big common space in a mall, distinguished from the typical mall food court by being expressly intended to be a comfortable gathering space that the community can use as their "third place" - one that is neither home nor the office.

I had seen a similarly convivial space in the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue before (turns out they are backed by the same developer), and I loved the idea but found myself a bit skeptical. Shopping malls are private spaces conditionally open to the public, and typically so tightly controlled and intensely devoted to the act of selling stuff that it was hard to imagine them really working as worthwhile gathering places for anything else. My abiding suspicion that the loveliness of the Bellevue and Lake Forest Park third places was an illusion was finally put to rest when the Amigos told me that they had coauthored a book, using Third Place Commons as their main office through the whole process. That's a serious commitment of time, effort and concentration, and if the venue worked for that then it really does succeed as a third place.

This left me wondering why so few mall food courts serve this purpose. In terms of its basic functional components, there's not much difference between these deliberate third places and the typical food court: a central open area with chairs and tables, with food and drink vending at its edges, and shops to either side of it. So why is it that so few are inviting, comfortable places to meet someone, or to spend countless hours working together on a project?

Clearly intent matters in itself—because these are designated as common areas, we know we aren't going to get shooed away or snarked at for not spending enough money—but there are also some design decisions that anyone trying to emulate these places could learn from:

The food & drink vending isn't as heavily intertwined with the seating as in most malls, so you can sit in the middle without bathing in the neon lights of a fast food outlet.
There's some open space that can be used as a stage with minimal planning.
Both places have a giant chess set, which serves as a highly visible sign that noncommercial uses are welcome.
The presence of the mall as an organisation—manifested in signs and uniformed personnel—is lighter in these places than the rest of the mall.
I don't recall this being true at Crossroads, but at the Third Place Commons the furniture feels quite different. It's made of wood, and it doesn't have the uniformity of typical chain-commercial furniture.
Both places are connected directly to the outside. At Crossroads it's possible to walk into the mall and go straight to the gathering area, without walking past more than one shop. At Third Place Commons that isn't possible, because it's upstairs, but there are big windows facing outside.

Alone, none of these are magic bullets—in fact, I think I can find a sterile, hostile food court with each of these features—but collectively they do help reinforce the impression that these are authentic, welcoming gathering spaces, carved out of the usually much less welcoming commercial space of the mall.

Townsville Scorecard

2010-05-21T16:42:00.000-07:00

The Townsville Region of North Queensland, Australia has a set of sustainability indicators, the Townsville Scorecard, along similar lines to Sustainable Seattle's own b-Sustainable project. Like b-Sustainable, it uses indicators to try to objectively assess whether sustainability trends in their region are improving, it takes a comprehensive view of sustainability, and it makes explicit the interlinked nature of the indicators.

It is a good deal simpler than our project, with 33 indicators as compared to our list of almost 200 (create a free account and log in to see the full list). This is both an advantage and drawback, in that a shorter list must necessarily leave things out, but is also much easier to maintain and describe. And on the description front, Townsville has done a good job of presenting quickly comprehensible summaries of the indicators (here's an example) along with concise commentary that adds a lot of value. b-Sustainable is a work in progress, and you can expect to see us take inspiration from some of these ideas as we improve its interface over the coming months.

We believe that every region should have a set of indicators broadly along these lines, because measuring what really matters is a crucial first step towards improving it and properly assessing the effectiveness of sustainability efforts. One of our long term goals for b-Sustainable is to package both the indicators themselves and the software to display and analyse them as an open source project that sustainability advocates and organisations elsewhere can use as a starting point for their own. Until we have that ready, projects like the Townsville Scorecard show how it can be done independently.

The Sound Stewardship program

2010-05-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Sustainable Seattle is in the process of adopting a habitat restoration site on Seattle's Duwamish estuary. As we get to know the site, we're hoping to post photos and reports from there, but this first post will just be about the restoration program itself. It's a very successful way of mobilising volunteers for long-term commitments, so it's worth sharing.

People for Puget Sound is the organisation responsible. They have access to a large number of habitat restoration sites around Puget Sound, as part of the broader effort to restore the severely impaired marine ecosystem here. As is so often the case with restoration projects, the initial work is much better funded than maintenance, so they need a great deal of volunteer help to maintain the sites and ensure that the initial investment is not lost. Because these sites are mostly small pockets of shoreline in heavily disturbed environments, such as Seattle's industrial waterfront, they need at least 10 years of active maintenance and monitoring to become settled, and if they're ever completely abandoned they will become overrun by invasive plants.

People for Puget Sound's solution to this is the Sound Stewardship program. This invites people to get training in a range of topics including a history of the Duwamish River, introduction to ecology, native vs. invasive plant identification, weed control, and planting techniques. The training is free, but in exchange trainees must pledge to volunteer 40 hours over the coming year at one of the restoration sites. Most people keep their pledge, and most of them are able to keep coming back to the same site so they get to know it well and become deeply committed to taking care of it.

The really impressive part is what happens next: once people have had the training and the chance to become invested in a site's well-being, many of them stay on board for years. These people not only continue to volunteer at their sites, but become the strongest advocates for habitat restoration, and the best recruiters of future volunteers - an outcome any volunteer project must envy.

Write for SCAN!

2010-05-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

We are inviting guest contributors to share good practice, success stories, cautionary tales and thoughtful discussions from urban sustainability efforts around the world. If you think you might be interested, read on for answers to contributors' questions:

What should I write about?
Anything about urban sustainability. We mostly focus on the positive, so where possible posts should be framed in terms of either good practices that other cities should copy, or mistakes from which we can collectively learn. Theoretical discussions are welcome, but we want the bulk of posts here to be about projects that are currently happening. We are especially interested in projects that touch on multiple aspects of sustainability: environmental impact, social justice, lasting and shared prosperity, and engagement of the public.

Who is the intended audience?
Broadly, people who are interested in sustainability and urban design & policy. We don't assume that our audience has deep technical knowledge or will be familiar with jargon and acronyms, but we do assume they have some ideas about urban sustainability. We also want this blog to be as usable as possible for people speaking English as a second language, so please try to write at an 8th grade reading level.

How much do you want me to post?
Overall, we're trying to get this blog stable at anything from one post per day to one per week. It's up to you how big a contribution you make to that - if you only ever submit one thing that's still useful. Each post should be short enough that most people would read it in one sitting - if that's not long enough for you to explore an idea properly, consider breaking it into a series of posts.

Should I include images? Do you have requirements for these images?
Images are not required, but they often explain things better than a long string of words. Images do not need to be print-quality, and they don't need to be your own, but you must have permission to use them, and if they are not yours you must credit the owner clearly. We want readers to be able to assume that everything not explicitly credited is the author's original work.

What are the guidelines for talking about politics?
Sustainable Seattle advocates for sustainability, but we are not a political campaign group, and as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit we are not allowed to endorse political candidates or parties. Don't shy away from discussing political issues, but we don't want this blog to be a place for advocating for particular politicians or parties, or for posts that are primarily about politics.

Who owns my posts?
The author of a post retains ownership, but anything you publish here will be covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 licence, which allows others to republish your work for non-commercial uses as long as they credit you as the author.

How will I be credited?
Every post by a guest blogger will have a line like "Guest post by Marco Polo" added, and be tagged with the posters name, so that you will have a URL that lists all of your posts in one place, like this one.

How do I start?
Email us with a bit of information about yourself, and an idea of what you would want to post about. If we think it fits, we'll ask you to send a first post in. At first, we will ask you to email posts to us for approval - after the first few we'll give you an account to post directly.

What if I have more questions?
Please ask more questions in the comments to this post, or by email. Your questions help us refine our ideas.

The Story of Stuff - Bottled Water

2010-03-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

European Green Capital: Sister Cities are doin' it for themselves in Europe

2010-02-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

Healthy competition amongst our European sister cities benefits us all. Going beyond an integrated approach to urban management making cities healthier and better places to live, the awards aim to further encourage cities to achieve a high level of environmental protection and to improve the quality of the environment.

Europe is now an essentially urban society, with four out of five Europeans living in towns and cities. Most of the environmental challenges facing our societies originate from urban areas, but it is also these urban areas that bring together the commitment and innovation needed to resolve them.

The European Commission has long recognised the important role that local authorities play in improving the environment, and their high level of commitment to genuine progress. The European Green Capital Award has been conceived as an initiative to promote and reward these efforts.

The award is given to a city that:

Has a consistent record of achieving high environmental standards;
Is committed to ongoing and ambitious goals for further environmental improvement and sustainable development;
Can act as a role model to inspire other cities and promote best practices to all other European cities.

The award marks a city's wish and capability to solve environmental problems in order to both improve the quality of life of its citizens and reduce the contribution it makes to the global environment as a whole.

At an award ceremony in Brussels on 23 February 2009, the first European Green Capitals were announced:

For inspiration on what we can do and for ways to be inspired - Read more about the finalists.

Submitted by: Kezia Nielson

Blessed Unrest

2010-02-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

Leading environmentalist and social activist Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice.

From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up, in every city, town, and culture. and is emerging to be an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide.

Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and hidden history, which date back many centuries. A culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire and delight any and all who despair of the world's fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself. Fundamentally, it is a description of humanity's collective genius, and the unstoppable movement to reimagine our relationship to the environment and one another.

Watch the video here

Home

2010-02-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

"Home", by the French film maker Yann Arthus-Bertrand is both beautiful and horrific at the same time. Be prepared for a big emotional impact. It is filmed almost entirely from the air all the way across the globe and gives a panoramic, well informed picture of the fossil fuel and energy crisis, the water and the climate crisis - and the vast and growing inequalities on a global scale.

A theme expressed throughout the documentary is that of linkage—how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a "delicate but crucial" natural balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient.It's basically all there for everyone to see visually - including, thanks goodness, a small bit at the end giving a beacon of hope.

The best part - you can watch all 93 minutes here.

Sustainable Whistler and Austrian Passive House

2010-01-06T10:00:00.001-08:00

Sustainable Seattle had the pleasure of attending a lecture by a Whistler city official a couple of years ago at a Natural Step conference in Portland where we learned of the municipality's unique (especially for a resort town) long term vision. Their plan, Whistler2020, has helped inform major decisions from how to power the city to where urban growth should be allowed. With the upcoming Winter Olympics in the news it seems appropriate to mention another forward thinking project currently under way in the region.
The Austria House, a structure meant to house the Austrian Olympic Committee and a public broadcasting studio, has recently been completed in Whistler. The house conforms to the Passive House standards, meaning that no energy will be required to heat or cool the building. This is accomplished by super-insulating the envelope of the building (including high-performance glass), ensuring air-tightness, and using heat-recovery ventilators. Essentially, the body heat produced by the occupants is enough to warm the building. After the games, the Austrian Government will hand the building over to Whistler for use as a public events pavilion.
Pretty exciting technology, especially now that North America is catching on to a construction method widely practiced in Europe.

Mr. Nickels goes to Copenhagen

2009-12-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels. We hope he found satisfaction this past week at the Climate Summit for Mayors in Copenhagen. Largely insulated from the realpolitik and deal-making of their national-level counterparts, he and 49 other mayors from around the globe had the chance to tout programs and accomplishments, exchange ideas, and collaborate as one might hope at a climate summit.

For a taste, check out Evergreen Film's report:

On Nickels

We think it’s worth noting just a few of the mayor’s achievements before he leaves us:

Added light rail to Seattle’s public transportation portfolio
Launched the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, now joined by over 1,000 mayors!
Committed Seattle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012 (we’re already there) and by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
Created City of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and the Environment
Created the Green Building Task Force with the aim of increasing new and existing buildings’ efficiency by 20%

On Disappointment in Copenhagen

Perhaps there’s a silver lining in the propagation and legitimizing of successes at the city-scale. If cities move the status quo, nations will follow. Thank you Mayor Nickels!

Sustainable San Mateo County debuts 'Sustainability Hub'

2009-04-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Sustainable San Mateo recently launched their Sustainability Hub website. The site has it all...a one stop spot for sustainable everything in San Mateo County. You'll find everything from consumer resources, business ideas, government contacts, and yes...even indicators (which we here at Sustainable Seattle are partial too of course). Surf on by and check it out.

Organizations | US | Washington State | Washington Fair Trade Coalition

2009-04-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

Who they are:
An alliance of organizations committed to educating the people of Washington State about issues related to justice in global trade. The primary concern of WFTC is to reach a consensus amongst the public on what “Fair Trade” should include. Along with over 40 local and national partner organizations, the WFTC is successfully increasing public participation in the trade policy making process.

Examples of fair trade practices:

Focusing on exports from developing countries to developed countries
Paying fair wages in a local context
Providing clean, safe and healthy workplaces
Respecting the environment
Market access for marginalized producers
Sustainable and Equitable trading relationships
Consumer awareness raising and advocacy
http://www.sweatfree.org/wa
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/

WFTC’s pilot project:
http://www.tradestories.org/

The Trade Stories Project was started in order to collect and document stories of real people whose lives have been negatively affected by the current free trade system. The website displays several touching stories from people such as a displaced automotive worker, a young jobless immigrant woman and a struggling small business owner in Pennsylvania, to list a few. The website also invites the reader to share his/her own free trade related stories.

Organizations | International | Net Impact

2009-04-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

Net Impact is an international organization with a mission to use business to improve the world. The organization invites people to look at sustainability in a holistic manner by hosting national/international conferences, sharing information on its website, and raising awareness through engagement with businesses. While it has its roots in business schools, Net Impact also has professional chapters in cities, such as Seattle and Geneva, involving people who are inspired to make a difference through CSR, social justice, non-profit development, environmental sustainability, etc.

Seattle chapter has more than 100 members who gather regularly to discuss what’s happening in the world of sustainability around the globe and in their own neighborhoods. Through their commitments, they aim to inspire people around them to act on the causes that they are passionate for.

Activities they have done in the past include, Green Drinks, Green Festival, and cause-based dinners and more. Professional chapter also interacts closely with the academic chapter in the University of Washington through networking events.

Organizations | US | Seattle | Seattle Tilth

2009-04-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

A Brief Introduction:

Seattle Tilth

Q: Who are they?

A: Seattle Tilth, a community-based organization of farmers, gardeners and consumers dedicated to organic gardening, conserving natural resources and supporting local food systems.

Q: Where are they?

A: The Pacific Northwest, USA.

Q: What's their mission?

A: “The mission of Seattle Tilth is to inspire and educate people to garden organically, conserve

natural resources and support local food systems in order to cultivate a healthy urban

environment and community.”

Q: What have they already done?

A: Built Demonstration and Children's Gardens in Seattle, WA. Created books and articles on organic gardening, resource conservation and even raising chickens. Organized Seattle Tilth's Edible Plant Fair and Harvest Festivals Created a nationally-recognized Master Composter Program

Q: What are they doing now?

A: Educating public about organic gardening, sustainable agriculture and resource conservation

through classes and workshops, Public demonstrations including annual festivals and fairs
Advising Northwest Gardeners on best practice through Garden Hotline.

Q: How do they define Sustainability?

A: Minimizing natural resource use is paramount, but support of the idea that “food is a cultural,

not a technological product”, as suggested by farmer and poet Wendell Berry, is vital to sustaining healthy urban and rural communities.

Q: How do I learn more?

A: Visit: http://www.seattletilth.org/

A tale of two Sustainable Wallingfords

2008-10-11T08:55:00.001-07:00

A recent article in the Ballard Journal by Katherine Luck titled "Sustainable Wallingford's British connection: Grassroots Seattle group partners with U.K. counterparts in climate change survey" shows how is really is possible to think globally but act locally. The two Sustainable Wallingfords (Sustainable Wallingford - UK and Sustainable Wallingford - USA) found each other online and it's been a successful match ever since. Both organizations have missions around community level sustainability and both view climate change as one of their key issues. Here at Sustainable Seattle we've seen a lot of sustainability efforts move from high level connections to more local level initiatives so maybe its time for the idea of 'sustainable Sister Cities' to move over and make way for 'innovative namesake neighborhoods'. Photo via Ballard Journal