Last month, Gina and I took our bikes onto the Coast Starlight and enjoyed a luxurious (and low-polluting) train ride to Portland, Oregon, where we visited friends, family, and one of our Bicycle Fixation retailers, and most of all explored what they're doing up there with bicycling and transit to remake it into a prosperous, clean, and happy little city.

We fell in love with the place, and we think they're doing a lot of things right...read all about it, and view our slideshow, right here:

Cycling in Portland, 2010: Both More and Less than Paradise

Richard Risemberg on 05.27.10 @ 12:57 PM PST [link]  

Here are some photos from a brief trip to New Orleans. If you go and need the services of a cab (the airport bus proved to be unreliable and didn't go all the way downtown, requiring a transfer with a long wait), call David Hammer 504-931-0323. He was particulary informative and passionate about the city.

Eric Miller on 05.23.10 @ 06:46 AM PST [link]  

Something I had been musing on for a long time has started to come to fruition now, and that is the concept of "edible walls": building walls planted with various comestible flora, as shown in the small sampling of links below.

Green Walls Growing Popular

Vertical Gardening with Edible Walls

"Edible Walls" Green Up downtown LA

Being that the idea is being developed mostly in the US for now, the solutions tend to be more technology-dependent--and expensive--than I think is always necessary.

Generally, you are told that to make an edible wall you must either build the wall specifically for that purpose, or, more often, buy planting modules to attach to the wall.

Nothing evil about that, but it does cut many existing walls out of the picture, walls whose owners are unable or unwilling to pay for the modules and their installations. In poor areas, this leaves wall owners and users at the mercy of other people's charitable feelings and ample spare time. Of course in America every concept exists to be sold, but I don't think it need be so complicated...nor so expensive.

As I walk or bicycle around Los Angeles, I see wall after broad blank wall that rises out of a little strip of dirt at its base, originally meant for a strip of grass or perhaps flower, now generally bare neglected soil. (I am speaking only of commercial or civic buildings here.) These strips may be only twelve or eighteen inches deep, but often already have sprinklers--and if they don't their limited extent makes it easy to water them with a hose.

Now, there are many, many edible plants that can grow en espalier, that is, splayed against a wall, much the ay ivy grows but not so densely. It's often done with roses and some fruit trees--the first website I looked at offered apples, apricot, pear, nectarine, peach, and plum trees for the purpose, as well as berries, cherries, and grapes.

Squashes and many types of beans will grow en espalier as well--zucchini, cucumbers, anything that vines can be led up a simple wooden frame leaned against a wall, or along wires stretched between nails (if the wall owner can live with that). So can tomatoes or any other plant that does not need to be bushy and does not bear too heavy a fruit.

This does not require buying heavy, expensive modules that require professional installation and direct irrigation. All it requires are simple frames made of 1x1 lumber, and a drip line running along the strip of dirt, since everything is planted at ground level.

The vertical stuff planted near the base of the wall itself, and leaf vegetables in the remaining dirt between wall and sidewalk, driveway, lot, patio, or what have you.

Anybody out there doing this simpler, cheaper type of edible wall--they've been done for centuries in many places, but we mean in a public, urban context--let us know. We'd love to tell the world about it.

Richard Risemberg on 05.22.10 @ 06:49 AM PST [link]  

Yes, and do much more, according to Christopher B. Leinberger's article the The Atlantic...as he says in Here Comes the Neighborhood:

Although building the infrastructure that supports dense development seems expensive, in the long run it's actually much cheaper than conventional suburban infrastructure--at most one-tenth the cost per home. A mile of sewer line costs about the same to build whether it is on the metropolitan fringe or in a densely built inner suburb, but the line serves many more people in the inner suburb. And households in walkable urban areas use considerably less energy, in some instances at least a third less. High-density living even appears to spur faster rates of innovation; in a knowledge economy, ideas come faster and can be developed more quickly when more people can meet and mix easily.

But most immediately, investment in rail, bike, and walking infrastructure, laying the groundwork for developing the kind of housing that is now in demand, is essential if we want to restore the economy to health. In the mid-to-late 20th century, the growth of the suburbs propelled America's economy. Growth of walkable neighborhoods in cities and suburbs can play a similar role in the decades to come, sparking growth in the broader economy--but only if we start preparing today.

Read the entire article here.

Richard Risemberg on 05.13.10 @ 05:22 AM PST [link]  

Press release from Cincinnati, Ohio, announcing the city's first "bike corral"--a big step forward for an old-line American city:

The City of Cincinnati celebrated Earth Day by permanently removing an on-street automobile parking spot and replacing it with bicycle parking. Cincinnati installed the region's first bicycle "corral" on Lingo Street in the bicycle laden Northside neighborhood. Bicycle corrals are grouped bike parking installations placed in an existing on-street automobile parking space.
The Northside corral replaced one on-street automobile parking space with twelve bicycle
parking spaces.

According to Michael Moore, Interim Director of the Department of Transportation &
Engineering, "Providing plenty of convenient and secure bicycle parking is a critical aspect of
serving those who currently use bicycles for transportation and encouraging future cyclists."
Historically, Cincinnati's bicycle parking has been provided in bike racks on the sidewalk.
However, in a growing number of commercial areas the demand for bicycle parking is too much
for the sidewalk, and the overabundance of bicycles can block pedestrians' way.

On-street bicycle parking provides many benefits where bicycle-use is high and growing:

• Businesses: Corrals provide a 12 to 1 customer to parking space ratio and advertise
  "bike-friendliness."
  
• Pedestrians: Corrals clear the sidewalks and serve as de facto curb extensions.
  
• People on bicycles: Corrals increase the visibility of bicycling.
  
• Motor vehicle drivers: Corrals improve visibility at intersections by eliminating the
  opportunity for larger vehicles to park at street corners.

For more information about the City's bicycle program, visit www.cincinnati-oh.gov/bikes.

Richard Risemberg on 05.06.10 @ 05:55 AM PST [link]  

NC contributor Chip Haynes just wrote us from the Gulf Coast of Florida, where he lives. He is awaiting the seemingly inexorable advance of the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon sinking. He says:

I thought you'd appreciate the attached letter. I hand-delivered it to the local newspaper this morning.

So far, we see no trace of The Big Spill here in Clearwater (everything looks lovely), but I suspect that will change in about a week, if not sooner. At the rate it's going right now, the Deepwater Horizon spill should exceed the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill by next Sunday, with no end in sight. Go team. We're Number One!

I've buried both parents and I buried my dog. I've said goodbye to people I didn't want to leave and I've left places when I didn't want to go. Last Sunday morning I pedaled my bicycle to Clearwater Beach and locked it up at Pier 60. I walked out on the sand south of the pier and filled a small jar with pure, perfect, brilliant white sand. I put the jar back in my pack and pedaled home. It was the saddest thing I've ever done.

I know all things change, but to see all of this change for the worse, for nothing less than laziness and greed, is an astounding disappointment and a thorough condemnation of our misguided priorities. I won't say I didn't look back. The view from the top of the bridge is still beautiful--but for how much longer? A week? A month?

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon has become an event horizon in its own right. Will the oil reach the beach? Or is it simply a matter of when? In a jar on my workbench, next to all of the jars of bicycle parts, is a jar of pure, perfect, brilliant white sand from Clearwater Beach. I want to remember it all as it was, and as I hope it will be. I will save what I saved, seeing as how we aren't smart enough to protect the rest of it.

Just another sign that it is simply madness to continue building our societies around the car. Automobile obsession carries the seeds of its own destruction in its very genes....

Richard Risemberg on 05.03.10 @ 11:08 AM PST [link]  

From Around Dallas and Fort Worth

Eric Miller on 05.01.10 @ 10:49 AM PST [link]