Alan Durning’s “Year of Living Carlessly” and “Bicycle Neglect”

1:04 PM EST on November 19, 2007

Alan Durning, executive director of the Seattle-based Sightline Institute has been doing some great writing on Livable Streets and sustainable transport issues over the last year. If you haven't run across his work, he is writing a pair of ongoing series that I think will be of particular interest to Streetsblog readers.

On Friday, Durning published a piece in Grist about his experiment with a plug-in hybrid-electric car as a part of his Year of Living Carlessly series.

Given that most New York City residents have neither a car nor a reliable parking spot close enough to their house to run an extension cord, Durning's other series will be of more interest. His Bicycle Neglect series examines why most Pacific Northwest cities "don't treat bicycles as transportation,
which communities are doing the best job, and what's at stake," issues that are equally relevant outside the Cascadia region.

In a recent blog post, Durning points us to an outstanding report by University of Washington planner
Alyse Nelson who spent much of last year in Copenhagen learning how that city has transformed itself into a sustainable transport mecca. Urban planners, prepare to geek out on the full range of Copenhagen street and intersection typologies:

She assembled her conclusions in an elegantly illustrated report (pdf)– a picture book on how to build a cycling city. The gritty particularsof street designs and diagrams of parking placement will fascinatespecialists, but I think the main lesson of Alyse’s booklet is visiblesimply by looking at the pictures. Copenhagen treats bicycles with asmuch care and attention as it treats cars. Consequently, cycling inCopenhagen is commonplace: normal, mundane, unremarkable. Sort of likedriving in Cascadia.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Alan Durning’s “Year of Living Carlessly” and “Bicycle Neglect”

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