Last I wrote about Boston’s new bike-sharing program, Hubway, it was about how popular the service was. (Oh yeah, and I shared a test ride blog from someone at Boston University.) Well, the rockin’ and rollin’ on Hubway bicycles…
Help Fund DIY Global Village Construction Set
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.”
Scotland — Home to World’s 1st Online Urban Green Space Map?
I recently read a headline saying that Scotland had made the “World’s First Urban Green Space Map.” Now, while that sounds pretty cool, I’m not sure if I caught what’s first about it. As you may or may not know, my master’s degree was in city planning — making urban green space maps is nothing new in the field. Even making online, interactive versions of the maps like this one is not at all unheard of. My only thought is that it might be the first national-scale map of its kind….
NYC Bike-Sharing Program to Start with 10,000 Bikes!
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).
Boston Hubway Test Ride
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:
Boston Bike-Sharing Program is Rockin’ It
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.
Shareable Future of Cities (Alex Steffen TED Video)
As a city planner by education, I’m a big fan of Alex Steffen, since he talks all about reworking cities (especially U.S. cities) to be more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly, more efficient, more enjoyable. But this TED video of Steffen shared with me by Eat Drink Better and Feelgood Style director Becky Striepe talking about the place of sharing in greening our cities is beyond the typical talking points and is quite interesting. I highly recommend checking it out:
Habitat for Humanity & Center for Creative Land Recycling Team Up for Huge East Oakland Project
Last week, I featured a great project by the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR), the Sacramento Railyard renovation and revitalization project. CCLR is focused on reusing or recycling brownfields, lands dirtied with industrial contamination that just need a bit of effort to get in use again. This is popular, exciting work amongst city planners — it’s like turning an old, beat-up car into a beauty again.
Rebirth of Sacramento Railyard & Center for Creative Land Recycling {Green NGO Highlighted}
With my professional training in city planning, I have to admit that I get giddy over cool smart growth projects. I recently ran across one such project, a super cool one, and one of the key organizations behind it. The project is the redevelopment of Sacramento’s downtown railyard, which apparently employed 10,000 employees at the height of its use and was the largest single workforce in Central Valley for 8 decades. One of the key organizations behind it is the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR).
Bike-Sharing Program in Wrocław, Poland — 1st Ride
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…