Month: June 2014

France Pays People to Cycle to Work

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

France is experimenting with new way to subsidize transportation by getting more people to bicycle to work. Traffic in Paris is particularly awful and with ongoing population growth and car-focused infrastructure the transportation problems are only going to increase. France is hoping that getting people to ride bicycles will stymie the growth of transportation issues.

French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier, noting that commuting using public transport and cars is already subsidized, said that if results of the test are promising, a second experiment on a larger scale will be done.

The ministry hopes that the bike-to-work incentive scheme will boost bike use for commuting by 50 percent from 2.4 percent of all work-home journeys, or about 800 million km, with an average distance of 3.5 km per journey.

In Belgium, where a tax-free bike incentive scheme has been in place for more than five years, about 8 percent of all commutes are on bicycles. In the flat and bicycle-friendly Netherlands, it is about 25 percent, cycling organizations say.

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Chilean Dam Project Broken Up Thanks to Activists and Locals

- Adam Clare

Activism works, just ask the Chilean communities that stopped a hydroelectric dam from being built. The dam was going to cause a lot of local ecological havoc with little actual gain to the local populace. The Chilean government has backed down from building the dam and the communities that were to be affected are celebrating the decision. Chile is committed to supporting other forms of renewable energy that won’t cause such environmental damage.

The committee “decided to side with complaints presented by the community,” Environment Minister Pablo Badenier told reporters. “As of now, the hydroelectric project has been rejected.”
…
Opponents complained that the plan required 5,700 hectares (14,000 acres) of land to be submerged and would involve cutting through swathes of forests to build the dams along the Baker and Pascua rivers. Fears were also expressed that the project, which would have involved the relocation of some three dozen families, would destroy vital habitat for the endangered Southern Huemul deer.

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Bank: Toronto’s Trees Worth $7 Billion

- Adam Clare

One of Canada’s largest banks has announced that their economic research has concluded that in Toronto alone the tree canopy is worth $7 Billion (CAD). The non-monetary value of trees is obvious to most people and usually that’s enough to justify keeping trees around. However, there are people who only think in monetary terms and to those people we can now use the results of economic research to prove the greatness of trees.

If Toronto’s trees are worth $7 Billion, just imagine what the total value of trees are around the world!

It’s also well known that trees help manage temperature, both by blocking cold winds in winter, but also keeping the city cool in summer. Alexander said the net cooling effect on the city of a young, healthy tree is equivalent to 10 room-sized air conditioners, running 20 hours a day.

“On their own, these effects might seem small, but over the long term, these benefits make a significant contribution to environmental well-being,” Alexander said.

Beyond mitigating the need to belch out any more air pollution to cool the city, trees also provide an important role in storing pollutants already out there. The total amount of carbon currently stored in Toronto’s urban forest is estimated at 1.1 million tonnes — roughly the amount emitted by 700,000 cars a year.

Read more here.

Support DeepCity 2030: A City Sim About Cats And Resilient Cities

- Adam Clare

DeepCity Pitch video from DeepCITY Project on Vimeo.

DeepCity 2030 is like Sim City meets Clash of Clans plus a Laser Cat and at least one Disco Jesus. The game has a hyperbolic approach to climate change and it’s up to the player to figure out what sort of city they want to create. Players can deal with environmental issues by harming other players or by trying to build a green utopia. It’s a social game with a fun environmental twist. The team includes theatre of The End of Suburbia.

By the year 2030, 6 out of 10 humans will live in cities. The way these urban centres evolve to manage their energy and waste will determine the fate of the planet. Deep City 2030 asks the question, ‘What if cities could save the world?’.

The game combines a gritty steampunk aesthetic and off-beat humour with ongoing opportunities for players to demonstrate strategic prowess by inventing possible world futures.

The goal in Deep City 2030 is to survive and build a livable city, using whatever tactics you choose. It’s in your power to create a city that reigns supreme in the face of hostile competitors, a greedy Overlord, and cataclysmic world events. Be the leader of your own futuristic empire in Deep City 2030!

The game starts in a city in the year 2030. Dark, whimsical characters inhabit and can change the city as you play. Players explore deeper post-apocalyptic settings or work towards building resilient cities, solo or multiplayer. Your friends in social networks can be key advisors or adversaries. As in the real world, there are a lot of ways to “get ahead”. You can forge alliances with other players to make your city a better place for everyone. Or you can embrace the dark side and go rogue.

Support DeepCity now.

More coverage about the game elsewhere:

Boing Boing
Cliqist
Animal NY

Full disclosure: I provided some advice for this game.
This post original appeared on my game design blog.

Doctors Say Healthy People Come From Good Urban Design

- Adam Clare

A new report written by a handful of doctors titled Improving Health Care by Design concludes that in order to have a healthy populace we need cities designed for health. There is nothing startling in the report but it does provide one more reference and tool for people to use inspire positive change in their own communities.

The results: if we want healthy people, we need to build healthy communities. This means, the doctors suggest, that our communities need to made more conducive to walking, cycling, and public transit. The report concludes with calls for “major changes” in community design across the GTHA.

These are not perhaps particularly novel observations, few would argue that more opportunities for physical activity leads to better overall health. But the report, written as it was by doctors, adds leverage to these ideas by attempting to quantify more specifically, the health effects of good community planning.

Read more.

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