Back in May, I wrote about Open Source Ecology’s DIY Global Village Construction Set. It’s a wicked cool idea of a handful of DIYers, farmers, and engineers, led by Marcin Jakubowski, to help create:
“A world where every community has access to an open source Fab[rication] Lab which can produce all the things that one currently finds at a Walmart cost-effectively, quickly, on demand from local resources.”
I have written about New York City’s planned bike-sharing program a couple times here on EcoLocalizer, and have written about bike-sharing programs in Paris, China, Barcelona, London (a couple times), Chicago, D.C. (sister site Ecopreneurist has as well — linking to that piece), Boston, and my current city of Wroclaw (twice). I’m a fan. But I’ve got one problem with many attempts at bike-sharing — the programs start too small. Well, NYC is not disappointing me. It’s starting with 10,000 bikes at 600 stations, comparable to Paris (probably the most successful and certainly the biggest program in the world, which started with 10,000 bikes at 750 stations).
Following up on my recent post on Boston’s new and highly successful bike-sharing program, Hubway, I thought I’d direct your attention to a great post on Boston University’s news site, BU Today, in which Leslie Friday describes her experience testing out Hubway. Here’s the intro:
D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare bike-sharing program has been a great success (despite its rather small size). Paris’ Velib bike-sharing program rocked the world with its tremendous, unprecedented success. Barcelona’s Bicing program was much more successful than originally anticipated. And so on and so on. Now, it’s being reported that Boston’s new bike-sharing program is a great success, even much more successful than originally anticipated.
I know it’s been FOREVER since I was posting on here. Think I’m going to get back to doing so a little more regularly. But in a different way. Just going to write about what’s going on, rather than re-share…
Switzerland looks like one of the prettiest countries in the world. It’s got an amazing quality of life. And I heard recently that it has NEVER been in debt. Wow. I think the U.S. could learn a lesson or two from this leading country (starting with: DON’T POUR YOUR MONEY INTO WARS & “DEFENSE”).
Continuing on with my Green NGO Highlighted series, which I got away from for a short time, here’s a cool one a good Facebook friend of mine shared with me nearly two months ago. It’s the Bamboo Bike Project, based in Africa, which combines two of the greenest things on the planet.. bamboo and bikes.
I wrote a pretty extensive introduction to Wrocław’s new bike-sharing program about a month and a half ago, with 18 photos and 2 videos included. Now, I said that I would write an update once I tried it out and I finally have. Marika (my partner) and I were walking to the store today and decided on the way to try it out if there were any bikes available (every other time we went to try it out there weren’t bikes available or, once, the system was down). It was quite simple to use, the process being…
I love writing on walkable cities. Have you noticed? I’m not the only one, though. There are huge communities and organizations of people working on that one particular issue. There’s also a great website, Walk Score, that ranks cities on their walkability (which I’m frustrated to find out is still not a word according to my Google Chrome spell checker).
There are so many great non-profit organizations (aka non-governmental organizations or NGOs) out there that I thought I might start a series highlighting some of these great NGOs. The first one I’m highlighting is one a friend recently directed me towards — the Walkable and Livable Communities Initiative.