News Roundup › Urban Ecology

A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Velib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.

Source: The New York Times

For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.

This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.

Source: New York Times

The company, which spent $4 million installing its New Orleans network, has not been able to pinpoint a specific reason why its venture into municipal wireless failed.

Source: City Business

Murders went down within 250 feet of the cameras, but the reduction was completely offset by an increase 250 to 500 feet away, suggesting people moved down the block before killing each other.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The Mayor of Paris is about to launch another novel scheme for fighting congestion and pollution: self-service cars Bertrand Delanöe aims to start with 2,000 electric-powered vehicles that subscribers can drive off without booking at dozens of sites 24 hours a day and then leave anywhere in the city.

Source: The Times

Available free to the public at www.bigboxevaluator.org, the web-based interface allows users to learn about commercial and retail development in general, but also to input specific information from their communities and receive customized reports on economics, values, planning and municpal services, and ways to improve the development process.

Source: The Orton Family Foundation

The mere mention of gentrification has so inflamed the discussion … that stereotypes and political grandstanding have obscured the facts and tangible impacts on real people. Austin succeeded, at least in part, in detaching itself from much of the hyperbole by conducting a set of separate, relatively rigorous studies on the intersection of gentrification and preservation. The city’s efforts have suggested that the answer to gentrification is not found in broad-brush generalizations, but rather in analyzing each neighborhood’s specific economic and social concerns, understanding them as inextricably tied to a complex local history, and devising appropriate solutions and strategies responsive to the community’s needs and aspirations.

Source: The Next American City

The office of Farr Associates is no next-generation green-building prototype — it’s located in the historic 114-year-old Monadnock Building, Chicago’s tallest all-brick skyscraper. But inside, green spores of sustainability burst forth. The open studio spaces have walls that have been painted by a local artist who used milk-based, non-toxic paints. The desktops are made of natural linoleum, and a translucent divider embedded with leaves separates one desk from another. “Occupancy sensors” trigger energy-conserving lights in the kitchenette, conference room, and main studio. Large, operable First Chicago School windows gaze over nearby Printer’s Row, letting in eastern and southern light that is welcomed by the many living creatures in the space.

Source: Grist

One example is an organization in Portland Oregon called City Repair, which reclaims neighborhood intersections for common use. Local artists, with the permission of the city, paint brilliant murals on the intersections. People build cob structures, such as bulletin board kiosks and tea houses. Residents start to see the streets and in fact the whole city differently — as something that is theirs, rather than as a grid of obstacles and boundaries. In at least one neighborhood that was repaired in this manner, crime has dropped measurably.

Source: On the Commons

Question: How did you go from neighborhood rallies to running a nationally renowned organization?

Answer: Well, the street protests were cute and motivating and all, but eventually I decided it was time to get serious. In 2001, I founded Sustainable South Bronx — not as a moral crusade, but as an economic-development group that was about planning our future, not just reacting to environmental blight. I wanted to play offense, not defense. I wanted to give our community permission to dream, to plan for healthy air, healthy jobs, healthy children, and safe streets.

Source: Grist Magazine

I walked toward my father’s old house. I’d shot it last year for documentary B-roll, and walking along the even numbered side of the street, I noted nothing much had changed… But I couldn’t find it.

I paced back and forth in the brightness of mid-day, like a caged animal, searching for the numbers “1461.” I found “1458,” and “1463.” What lay in between sent me reeling, cursing, shaking my head in the heat.

Source: Strawberry Blog

Guerrilla gardeners are sowing the seeds of resistance in south London, with a spot of illicit gardening in its neglected public spaces.

Striking at night, armed only with shrubs and plants, they set out to brighten up roundabouts and verges.

Source: The BBC

Analyses of the failure of all levels of government to prevent or effectively manage the Katrina calamity in New Orleans have generally missed a crucial point. Alongside bias against poor people and African-Americans is automobile apartheid, born of fifty years of suburban sprawl. First-class citizens drive motor vehicles, second-class Americans walk, cycle, or ride public transit. Certainly many of the latter are poor, but millions more are middle-class Americans.

When emergency response largely ignores the plight of second-class citizens, no one should be surprised.

Source: Grist Magazine

“When there are laws on the books, you shouldn’t have to ask citizens to buy property to save their neighborhood,” he says.

Source: City Business

This last group [Gen-X professionals] holds tremendous hope, for three reasons: 1) They’re young, and still have the stomach for major renovation projects. 2) They’re in their prime child-bearing years, and thus likely to inject a healthy dose of middle class kids into urban neighborhoods. 3) Many of them are from out of town, escaping the barren vapidity of Anywhere, U.S.A., in search of an originality only New Orleans can offer; these newcomers help counteract the brain drain.

Source: City Business