Increasing Connectivity

One way to improve community involvement and spread urban sustainability initiative in our connected century is to make use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and more specific websites like HomeElephant and ZimRide. HomeElephant is a social media site used for neighbors to connect, in case they’d like to meet each other, to organize neighborhood gatherings, simply do each other favors, view neighbor alerts, and rebuild community. The founder of the website, Chandler Powell, only knew ten people in his neighborhood before he created HomeElephant, and then, after, twenty homes in two streets joined. Now, at least 67 countries and 6156 neighborhoods are joined. The concept may be frightening for Americans because we enjoy our privacy and we are afraid of strangers. The average American may criticize the concept as “creepy,” however, for a person like Joe Hatchiban who would like to start an event to make use of a public space could use HomeElephant in order to take polls to see how locals would feel about a transformation in the area. 

Another safe social media website for neighbor connecting is Nextdoor, where privacy is guaranteed, but people can still meet each other. For those who want to “bring back a sense of community,” joining Nextdoor is a good step to take. The social network has already been made public in many acclaimed newspapers and news channels, like The New York Times and CNN. Another website, ZimRide can be used to connect people in a given area who would like to carpool. The site is very practical because it helps users save money and meet others heading in the same direction, besides having the benefit of being ecofriendly. Whether it is used by Miamians who hope to take one car off the road and lessen congestion or young college students who want to venture to San Francisco on a road trip (which happens to be ZimRide’s current top destination), ZimRide is a safer alternative to hitchhiking and a quicker alternative to planning trips and has made a modern, trendy approach to ride sharing. According to the website, “with Zimride profiles, you can check out interests, music tastes, and feedback before you share a ride.” Drivers are paid, and gas money is saved, which is very convenient in a bad economy. Though the United States currently struggles with healthy human connection and community in person as we see in our suburban landscaping, we are doing very well in connecting over the web, and we should take the opportunities that social media sites give us, if we are comfortable with them, to reestablish communities and meet new people in real life. 

Lerner on Urban Acupuncture

Speaking of creativity and engagement, there is actually a method originally coined by the urban planner Jaime Lerner which can be used to revitalize cities. Targeting specific issues such as mobility, socio-diversity, and sustainability can help in strategic improvement. Earlier, I compared the urban system to a natural ecosystem, with multiple parts comprising the whole and each individual part playing a vital role so that if an individual part fails, the whole collapses as well. Similarly, the city can be compared to the human body. The human body may have an illness and so we have to pinpoint a specific body function and intervene ourselves. The other option is to allow the body to fix the problem itself by giving it the tools to do so because of its innate plasticity. Cities work in the same fashion and Lerner has called this form of intervention and its domino effect "urban acupuncture." 

Read more about Lerner's theory at Harvard Business Review: Revitalizing Cities

Critical Mass for Dummies

Creativity and Engagement

Individual non-government initiatives have been taken up as well in various cities around the United States. Groups like Critical Mass have spruced up the biking experience in cities all around the world, including Miami. Since 1992, the activist group has organized monthly biking events sometimes attracting as many as a thousand people, setting a location to meet, and a route. The objective is not only to have an entertaining community activity, but also to push for more sharing of the roads and stricter driving laws. The rides do appear spontaneous to drivers, sometimes causing conflict, but pedestrians see it as a way to take the streets. 

Miami Critical Mass (from Beached Miami)

Other initiatives have included group gatherings on public spaces, such as karaoke. While government agencies and businesses have been involved in getting people back on the streets or in the parks through festivals and farmer’s markets, commoners like Joe Hatchiban, an Irishman, use the materials they have (in Joe’s case, a cargo bike, a microphone, and some portable speakers) and a bit of activism to transform a small stone amphitheater in a park in Berlin into a Sunday’s afternoon karaoke stage. On days with good weather, singers and entertainers from the streets can attract hundreds of people. It is a simple activity which brings the community together through a bottom-up approach, as Jacobs suggested works well for political change. Jan Gel, a Danish architect once said, “First life, then spaces, then buildings: the other way around never works” (Smith). This proves furthermore the theories Jacob’s presents that help cities grow properly and become healthy. A place cannot be pre-established by city planners. The place must have meaning to the people, and this can only happen when citizens themselves create the vibrancy of that place. Bringing life to a place and attracting attention from there is one way to encourage the interest in creating more and better public spaces. All it requires is creativity and engagement. 

Retrofitting the Way We Commute

A number of engineers and urban planners, including the City of Miami’s chief of infrastructure, Alice Bravo, have been investigating ways to make bicycle commuting a more popular method of transport in American cities. The biggest way to make bikers feel safe is to separate the traffic by speeds. Cars and bikes can travel side by side when the difference in speeds in slow so bicycling will not be dangerous. On the other hand, when the speed limit is high, there is a much more rigorous separation of traffic.  The Dutch also find biking more comfortable. A Miami-Dade County MPO found the separate bicycle lanes and intersections under highway overpasses in the Netherlands a very feasible idea to implement because underpasses in Miami are otherwise so dangerous to cross. Ever since the 1970s fuel shortage, Dutch traffic engineers have become very engaged in making bicycle commuting a viable alternative and more convenient and safer method of transport over cars. They have made small changes like distinct lanes and signage to welcome bikers onto the streets, but at the same time make sure biking and driving work well with each other. Also, in front of popular public spaces, technologically advanced bike parking areas have been installed as well. As a result, one will notice the vibrancy in a neighborhood.

Read more and watch video under Mobility

from "Streets Blogs"

The C40 Plan

City mayors like Los Angeles’ visited livable eco-cities like Curitiba to help them learn to influence actions in their own hometowns. Chicago’s Climate Action Plan, launch in 2008 was an attempt by the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, to reduce the city’s greenhouse emissions from its 1990 levels to 75% by 2020. As a result, its public transit usage rose, much less water was wasted (millions of gallons conserved), and eco-friendly changes were implemented such as a new line of hybrid buses and energy efficiency improvements in a total of 13,400 buildings. 

From The Economist's "Greening the Concrete Jungle" 

This effort shows that small changes—“tweaks” instead of “sweeping social engineering”—works well in the retrofitting process ("Greening the Concrete Jungle"). Conservation changes can be as small as switching lights from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent LED (light emitting diode) bulbs and switching the tops of roofs from asphalt heat-absorbing ones to green roofs (like Chicago’s City Hall) or heat-reflecting white roofs. Infrastructure changes can start with repaving streets with lighter, porous surfaces to reflect heat and decrease water runoff.  New York has created its own PLaNYC program as a result of its facing immense population growth to 9 million in the next 20 years, in which it hopes to improve public transportation and revitalize brownfield sites. A number of American cities have been listed under C40, which addresses urban planning and retrofitting for each specific city’s needs. C40 prioritizes public transit, implementing hybrid and electric vehicles into systems, increasing composting and recycling programs like those in Curitiba, increasing outdoor lighting efficiency which accounts for a fifth of current energy consumption and retrofitting homes and offices. At the same time, these changes are meant to save taxpayers money in the long-term. If Miami wanted to become active in retrofitting, it could join the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group[1]

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[1]LCCLG already comprises of 58 cities, with 297 million people accounting for 18% of the world’s GDP and 10% of all carbon emissions. These cities also account for 2/3 of its energy consumption and more than 60% of its greenhouse gas emissions