Science by People for People

To the average person it might look like scientists operate in an ivory tower away from reality, which, can make engaging in scientific issues intimidating. To bridge this gap engaged citizens and scientists have launched themselves into the “citizen science” way of doing things. Basically what that means is that they’re taking science to the streets.

Through Uprose and HabitatMap, another New York-based environmental justice organization, Gomez and a handful of other youth banded together to figure out exactly how much pollution the expressway was coughing into the neighborhood. “There are no entrances to the expressway in Sunset Par–just the exits,” says fellow youth organizer Brian Gonzales. “So we’re left with thousands of cars and trucks passing through every day.” The exhaust from those cars–particularly particulate matter 2.5, which is so small that 60 particles lined up equal the width of a human hair–is especially pernicious. While larger particles may lodge in nose hairs or the back of the throat and never make it into the body, PM 2.5 passes deep into the lungs and eventually the blood. They cause short-term problems like asthma and bronchitis, and cancer and heart disease later.

Read more.

Smart People Trust Others

Oxford University researchers have concluded that the more intelligent a person is the more likely they are to trust other people. This is assumed to be the case because smarter people have a better at determining what sort of people they want to be around and self-select to be around people who can indeed be trusted. The study also points out the benefits of trust for society at large (including not intelligent people).

The Oxford researchers found, however, that the links between trust and health, and between trust and happiness, are not explained by intelligence. For example, individuals who trust others might have only reported better health and greater happiness because they were more intelligent. But this turns out not to be the case. The finding confirms that trust is a valuable resource for an individual, and is not simply a proxy for intelligence.

Read more.

Charlottetown Transforms a Street for People

Residents of Charlottetown, P.E.I. decided to make their city nicer, more sustainable, and more fun by transforming one of their streets from car-dominated to people-friendly. They’ve made a great video showing what they did and hopefully it’ll inspire other communities to realize that streets are for people and we should use public space to celebrate the public.

People were really excited to join in on the one-day project, says one participant in the video. “People would just be walking by and like, “Oh, what’s going on?” I would tell them, “We’re transforming a street, do you want to take part?” All of a sudden, they were grabbing paint or chalk.”

Thanks to Kathryn! Who found it Huffington Post.

Remember People Not Things This Holiday

Many people who celebrate Christmas (or similar holidays of gift-giving) tend to focus on giving mass quantities or expensive gifts without regard. Man vs. Debt is a blog that focuses on getting rid of material things (and not getting new material goods) and they have a good post up on what you can do this Christmas to give something great to people and not committing acts of blind consumerism.

The plan on what to do is on you.

Courtney and I have decided to severely limit the gifts we buy this year. We won’t be buying for each other (instead we are making huge life changes – trust me – we are spending enough on those “gifts”).

We’ve bought a few small traditional “gifts” for younger family members, but decided that we would make small donations on behalf of any adults in our life. We’ll be browsing to attempt to find charities and non-profits that reflect the values of each family member and rather than buy them golf balls or a candle, we’ll make a small donation.

We are lucky that none of our family really cares about the “stuff”. The donations will be a valued gesture and by customizing each one, we show that we took time to think about and appreciate the personality of each family member.

Read more at Man Vs. Debt.

Build a City by Limiting Parking

Parking spaces for automobiles take away precious land from other uses and too many parking spaces can effectively kill a community. In Boston where they do anything to ensure cars reign supreme urban planners are turning their backs on providing parking spaces in order to revitalize the city.

The pro-car attitude is very 20th century and it’s good to see that more and more cities in North America are finding ways to ensure people can use the city as more than a place to drive and work.

City planners are in the middle of an extensive re-thinking of Boston’s zoning codes. As they work, neighborhood by neighborhood, to update the code, they’re flipping the conventional thinking about parking on its head: Instead of mandating that minimum levels of parking accompany new developments, they’re pushing to establish maximum parking caps.

Minimum parking requirements are relics of a time when urban vitality depended on developers’ ability to draw suburbanites into the city to work, shop, or live. As the suburbs boomed, cities imported suburban-style infrastructure and grafted it onto a decaying urban fabric. The result wasn’t just a landscape scarred by highways and pockmarked by monolithic concrete parking garages; this postwar shift also left reams of zoning code built on the assumption that the world revolved around the automobile.

Patterns of living, and travel, have evolved. Residents now work and shop in closer proximity to their homes. The city is no longer at the automobile’s mercy. But zoning hasn’t caught up to this new reality. Until now.

Environmental officials imposed flat parking caps downtown during the 1970s, but this new approach is surgical. The old parking cap made wide allowances for automobiles at residential developments. City planners are now arguing that residential developments should be given less leeway, not more, since many urban residents don’t need a car to get to work. That’s true in the Back Bay and downtown, and especially along the waterfront, where the BRA is trying to create a critical mass of technology and innovation firms by pushing small business incubators and cheap live-work space.

Developers aren’t huge fans of large parking requirements for urban apartment buildings, since parking garages are expensive to construct. Often, the cost of building parking spaces can make or break a project. Developers are also finding that renters aren’t demanding as many parking spots as they used to. Archstone’s Chinatown tower, for example, was built with a glut of excess parking; the last two residential towers to enter permitting in that neighborhood have been designed with dramatically lower quantities of parking. And the envelope can be pushed even further.

Read the rest at the Boston Globe.

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