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Join us Monday, November 18th; 2:30 - 3:15 pm! Upstream Thinking - Dr Ryan Meili in Winnipeg
by Jackie Avent (ASRTS) 14 Nov '13

14 Nov '13

Dr. Ryan Meili will be at the Eco-Centre on *Monday, November 18th* - 3rd Floor, 303 Portage Avenue *from 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm* for a discussion about the Winnipeg launch of *Upstream: Institute for a Healthy Society*. See this short animated film for an introduction! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qarQXqKbmLg Feel free to spread the word, and kindly RSVP to asrts(a)greenactioncentre.caso we know how many seats to arrange. As it's a short gathering, please ensure to be early or on time. Hope you can make it! Jackie *About Upstream* Upstream is a movement to create a healthy society through evidence-based, people-centred ideas. Upstream seeks to change the current conversation, reframing public discourse around the goal of true health and helping citizens understand the best ways to reach that goal. >From the emergency room, to homeless shelters, to the prison system, we see the consequences of downstream thinking all around us. Upstream thinking means investing wisely for future success rather than spending all of our time and resources responding to failure. If health for all is our goal, then upstream thinking is about addressing the things that have the greatest influence on our health, including income, employment, education, early childhood development, housing, nutrition and the wider environment. Upstream works with the growing body of evidence on these social determinants of health and use that knowledge to guide recommendations for change. By sharing stories through a variety of media, Upstream seeks to creatively engage citizens, sparking within them a personal stake in the social determinants of health and a demand for upstream alternatives to the status quo. Upstream uses this evidence and storytelling to foster a vibrant network of organizations and individuals who share this vision. By demonstrating that a better way is possible, we can help create the conditions for wiser decisions and a healthier Canada. Learn more at www.thinkupstream.net -- *Jackie Avent* | Active and Safe Routes to School Green Action Centre <http://greenactioncentre.ca/> 3rd floor, 303 Portage Avenue* | *(204) 925-3773 Green Action Centre is your non-profit hub for greener living. Support our work by becoming a member<http://greenactioncentre.ca/support/memberships/> Find us here<http://greenactioncentre.ca/content/ecocentre-directions-and-travel-options/>

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WFP: Time to open up Portage and Main
by Beth McKechnie 13 Nov '13

13 Nov '13

Time to open up Portage and Main By: Jeffrey Thorsteinson http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/time-to-open-up-portage-a… In 2017, the agreement that closed the corner of Portage and Main to pedestrians ends. With this in mind, city council has directed staff to study re-opening the intersection to foot traffic. It's admirable the city is taking this step. The arguments that have been made in favour of turning Portage and Main into a more pedestrian-friendly urban space are all correct. But it's important to remember we've been here before, without results. Only eight years ago a large competition calling for a re-design of the site was held. The winning scheme, by local architecture firm Corbett Cibinel, viewed the corner as a pedestrian hub with plans to improve the subterranean realm below. The proposal opened the intersection to foot traffic for evenings and weekends or entirely. But progress halted when then-mayor Glen Murray stepped out of civic politics and into an ill-fated federal election campaign. The meantime hasn't been all bad. The words "Portage and Main" still have an evocative power. It's here that crowds gathered when the Jets' return was announced. It's here that you find local treasures by prominent international firms: McKim Mead and White's Beaux-Arts Bank of Montreal and Skidmore Owings & Merrill's Richardson Building. Recent gestures add life and point in the right direction: a Starbucks at the base of the RBC tower and Hy's Steakhouse anchoring the Richardson building. New art has also appeared, paid for by building owners. The potential is clear, but we're still left largely with emptiness and barricades. Why? There is, of course, the agreement. But this document's language and legality is unclear. It leaves room for surface-level pedestrian crossings of the intersection as long as they "tie-in to the concourse." And with the assent of the corner's property owners, it could certainly be scrapped. In 2007, six out of seven owners agreed to this plan. The seventh, Oxford Properties, has since been replaced by Crown Realty, whose opinion on the matter is unknown. What's missing is leadership. In his 2010 re-election campaign Mayor Sam Katz stated that "Evenings and weekends are a reasonable compromise," but nothing's changed. Unmotivated politicians are just part of the picture. The larger reason behind the current state of affairs is a widespread conviction the corner must remain closed to avoid traffic headaches. More than any other, it's this notion that motivates keeping the corner closed. And it's an idea that hasn't yet received the critique it's due. Happily, it's easily refutable. If you take the time to look at the city's traffic map, it's clear Portage and Main isn't even Winnipeg's busiest corner. Regent and Lagimodiere, which is open to pedestrians, has approximately 189,500 cars pass through on a typical day. In contrast, Portage and Main gets 154,000. If you add up the streets feeding into Confusion Corner, whose name indicates its difficulty to navigate, you'll see that it too gets more traffic than Portage and Main. And yet I've never heard it suggested these corners be shut down to foot traffic. In fact, it's obvious countless cities around the world allow pedestrians to cross intersections with far higher traffic volumes than Portage and Main and that problems do not arise. If these cities adopted our route, Manhattan and Paris would be dominated by shady underground malls. Sites such as New York's Times Square, Herald Square and Columbus Circle are all busier than Portage and Main and all are open to foot traffic. Recently, New York City has given more space to pedestrians and amenities and has found traffic delays have gone down. Portage and Main was not shut to pedestrians because of the difficulty of mixing foot traffic and cars. The concourse was sold to Winnipeggers by the city mostly on the notion that a climate-controlled connection would greatly enhance life downtown. This has not been the case. We don't need to live by the mistaken assumptions of the past. And, importantly, even if pedestrians are allowed to cross above, if you like the concourse, its warm halls will still be there for you. These, hopefully, are the type of findings the city report will come to. When the day the agreement's end arrives, let's open the corner up and invite people back to Winnipeg's central landmark site. Or, better yet: don't wait. Jeffrey Thorsteinson is a Winnipeg architectural historian and writer with an interest in urban planning. Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 13, 2013 A9

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Green Lane Project - Selling Biking series
by Beth McKechnie 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser<http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=64bd122c67bd28d620978f4a5&id=5cb3d62b9a…>. [image: Green Lane Project]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d6…> This week's Green Lane Project news Selling biking: Perceived safety, the barrier that still matters<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> Nov 07, 2013 02:57 am *Second in a series about opinions held by the "swing voters" of bicycling <http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d6…>.* To people who ride bikes in many U.S. cities, Portland and San Francisco might feel like heaven. But for the thousands of people in those cities who own bikes but don't ride frequently, that's far from the case. Asked to rate the amount at which they were "concerned about safety when cycling in your city" on a scale of 1 to 5, three-quarters of such riders said read more<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d6…> [image: Like Selling biking: Perceived safety, the barrier that still matters on Facebook]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> [image: Google Plus One Button]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> [image: share on Twitter]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> Selling biking: A new study on the ‘swing voters’ of the street<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d6…> Nov 06, 2013 07:43 am *First in a series.* San Francisco and Portland are celebrated as two of the best U.S. cities for biking. In fact, one in every 25 American bike commuters lives in one of these two cities. But even in these cities' bike-friendly neighborhoods, hundreds of thousands of people — it's perhaps half the population — have ridden bikes before but rarely use them. What's stopping them? Even if they don't personally bike, what images make them read more<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> [image: Like Selling biking: A new study on the ‘swing voters’ of the street on Facebook]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…> [image: Google Plus One Button]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d6…> [image: share on Twitter]<http://greenlaneproject.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=64bd122c67bd28d62…>

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Fwd: Karen Lee Lectures, November 20th
by Beth McKechnie 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

Dean's Lecture Series *Karen Lee* The Key Roles of Community and Building Design in Protecting and Promoting Health *November 20, 2013* 12 PM | Room R160 Medical Rehabilitation Building Bannatyne Campus University of Manitoba and 6 PM | CENTRE SPACE John A. Russell Building Fort Garry Campus University of Manitoba Dr. Karen Lee lives in NYC. She teaches on the built environment and health at the Pratt Institute in New York, and is also Adjunct Professor at the Schools of Public Health at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta (also a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Non-Communicable Disease Policy) in Canada. She is also Senior Advisor on Built Environment & Healthy Housing at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Lee has been the lead for the NYC Health Dept in its work with 12 city agencies and non-government partners, in the development of the award-winning *Active Design Guidelines*, published in January 2010. She and her staff at the NYC Health Dept work with the American Institute Architects New York Chapter to organize the annual Fit City conferences since 2006. Since the publication of the *Active Design Guidelines*, Dr. Lee’s team has developed and implemented trainings on Active Design for architects and planners as well as community groups and residents, and has worked with city agencies and private sector partners on developing and implementing Active Design policies and practices in NYC and 15 other U.S. cities. Dr. Lee is also co-author on the recently released publications *Active Design Supplement: Promoting Safety, *and *Active Design: Affordable Designs for Affordable Housing* presenting low-cost and cost-neutral Active Design strategies to address the epidemics of obesity and related chronic diseases. Dr. Lee was also involved in the development and publication of the recent NYC Health Department publication *Active Design: Guide for Community Groups*. Dr. Lee also consults to and advises cities and organizations in Canada, Australia, Asia, Europe and Latin America as well as World Health Organization offices on issues related to the built environment and chronic diseases. Before coming to NYC, Dr. Lee was with the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she worked in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

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Friendly reminder: 2nd International Winter Cycling Congress - Call for Speakers and Early-bird Registration
by Beth McKechnie 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

Just a friendly reminder that the deadline for abstract submissions is a week tomorrow. And don't be shy about registering now -- your attendance is important and your registration fees will be appreciated. Thanks and please share widely! thanks, Beth * * * * * *2nd International Winter Cycling Congress* *Call for Speakers and Early-bird Registration* The 2nd International Winter Cycling Congress will be held *February 12 & 13, 2014*, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The Congress will provide a venue for delegates from around the world to share their expertise related to Winter Cycling. The *Call for Speakers*<http://wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg.org/program/call-for-speakers/>is open and the conference is accepting abstract submissions until *November 15, 2013*. Apply now and share your skills, research and wisdom related to planning, design, construction, maintenance, education, advocacy, data collection and management, culture building, and more. If there is snow on the ground, and you are working towards sustainable transportation, we want to hear from you. If you plan to attend as a delegate, *Early-bird Registration*<http://wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg.org/>is now open. Act soon – register before December 1st for a $100 discount. Discounts are also available for students and non-profits. Be sure to follow the conference on Twitter <https://twitter.com/wccwpg> or Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/Wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg> to connect with people around the world and to be updated on exciting keynote speaker announcements and other programming. Or subscribe<http://wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg.org/join-conference-newsletter-for-upd…>to the conference newsletter for email updates. If you are interested in sponsorship or a display booth, contact us<http://wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg.org/contact/>directly. For more information, please see Winter Cycling Congress 2014<http://wintercyclingcongresswinnipeg.org/> . [image: Inline image 1]

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Fwd: Upstream Thinking - Dr Ryan Meili in Winnipeg
by Jackie Avent (ASRTS) 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Please consider attending this event at McNally Robinson and the lecture earlier that day at U of M Faculty of Medicine. In the mean time, check out this great short video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qarQXqKbmLg>. I believe a lot of the work we do is already "thinking upstream", but how do we get the "mainstream" thinking in the same way? If you are interested in a Q&A or discussion with Ryan in the afternoon of November 18th (around 2:30), please let me know and we can arrange something in the downtown area. Cheers, Jackie On *Monday Nov.18th* please join Dr Ryan Meili for a discussion of his book, *A Healthy Society: how a focus on health can revive Canadian democracy* and the Winnipeg launch of *Upstream: Institute for a Healthy Society*. See this animated short for an introduction to Upstream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qarQXqKbmLg Ryan will be speaking at McNally Robinson (Grant Park location) at 7:30pm in the Travel Alcove and will be signing books afterward. Feel free to use the Facebook event page to invite others: https://www.facebook.com/events/651899148177645/?fref=ts He will also be speaking at noon at the Faculty of Medicine on *Social Accountability in Medicine: Shaking the Foundation* in Theatre C, Basic Medical Sciences Building, University of Manitoba. Both events are free of charge and open to the public. *About Upstream* Upstream is a movement to create a healthy society through evidence-based, people-centred ideas. Upstream seeks to change the current conversation, reframing public discourse around the goal of true health and helping citizens understand the best ways to reach that goal. >From the emergency room, to homeless shelters, to the prison system, we see the consequences of downstream thinking all around us. Upstream thinking means investing wisely for future success rather than spending all of our time and resources responding to failure. If health for all is our goal, then upstream thinking is about addressing the things that have the greatest influence on our health, including income, employment, education, early childhood development, housing, nutrition and the wider environment. Upstream works with the growing body of evidence on these social determinants of health and use that knowledge to guide recommendations for change. By sharing stories through a variety of media, Upstream seeks to creatively engage citizens, sparking within them a personal stake in the social determinants of health and a demand for upstream alternatives to the status quo. Upstream uses this evidence and storytelling to foster a vibrant network of organizations and individuals who share this vision. By demonstrating that a better way is possible, we can help create the conditions for wiser decisions and a healthier Canada. Learn more at www.thinkupstream.net -- *Jackie Avent* | Active and Safe Routes to School Green Action Centre <http://greenactioncentre.ca/> 3rd floor, 303 Portage Avenue* | *(204) 925-3773 Green Action Centre is your non-profit hub for greener living. Support our work by becoming a member<http://greenactioncentre.ca/support/memberships/> Find us here<http://greenactioncentre.ca/content/ecocentre-directions-and-travel-options/>

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The secrets of the world's happiest cit
by Dave Elmore 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/01/secrets-worlds-happiest-citie s-commute-property-prices The secrets of the world's happiest cities What makes a city a great place to live your commute, property prices or good conversation? Two bodyguards trotted behind Enrique Peñalosa <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Pe%C3%B1alosa> , their pistols jostling in holsters. There was nothing remarkable about that, given his profession and his locale. Peñalosa was a politician on yet another campaign, and this was Bogotá, a city with a reputation for kidnapping and assassination. What was unusual was this: Peñalosa didn't climb into the armoured SUV. Instead, he hopped on a mountain bike. His bodyguards and I pedalled madly behind, like a throng of teenagers in the wake of a rock star. A few years earlier, this ride would have been a radical and in the opinion of many Bogotáns suicidal act. If you wanted to be assaulted, asphyxiated by exhaust fumes or run over, the city's streets were the place to be. But Peñalosa insisted that things had changed. "We're living an experiment," he yelled back at me. "We might not be able to fix the economy. But we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier." I first saw the Mayor of Happiness work his rhetorical magic back in the spring of 2006. The United Nations had just announced that some day in the following months, one more child would be born in an urban hospital or a migrant would stumble into a metropolitan shantytown, and from that moment on, more than half the world's people would be living in cities. By 2030, almost 5 billion of us will be urban. Peñalosa insisted that, like most cities, Bogotá had been left deeply wounded by the 20th century's dual urban legacy: first, the city had been gradually reoriented around cars. Second, public spaces and resources had largely been privatised. This reorganisation was both unfair only one in five families even owned a car and cruel: urban residents had been denied the opportunity to enjoy the city's simplest daily pleasures: walking on convivial streets, sitting around in public. And playing: children had largely disappeared from Bogotá's streets, not because of the fear of gunfire or abduction, but because the streets had been rendered dangerous by sheer speed. Peñalosa's first and most defining act as mayor was to declare war: not on crime or drugs or poverty, but on cars. He threw out the ambitious highway expansion plan and instead poured his budget into hundreds of miles of cycle paths; a vast new chain of parks and pedestrian plazas; and the city's first rapid transit system (the TransMilenio <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio> ), using buses instead of trains. He banned drivers from commuting by car more than three times a week. This programme redesigned the experience of city living for millions of people, and it was an utter rejection of the philosophies that have guided city planners around the world for more than half a century. In the third year of his term, Peñalosa challenged Bogotáns to participate in an experiment. As of dawn on 24 February 2000, cars were banned from streets for the day. It was the first day in four years that nobody was killed in traffic. Hospital admissions fell by almost a third. The toxic haze over the city thinned. People told pollsters that they were more optimistic about city life than they had been in years. One memory from early in the journey has stuck with me, perhaps because it carries both the sweetness and the subjective slipperiness of the happiness we sometimes find in cities. Peñalosa, who was running for re-election, needed to be seen out on his bicycle that day. He hollered "Cómo le va?" ("How's it going?") at anyone who appeared to recognise him. But this did not explain his haste or his quickening pace as we traversed the north end of the city towards the Andean foothills. It was all I could do to keep up with him, block after block, until we arrived at a compound ringed by a high iron fence. Boys in crisp white shirts and matching uniforms poured through a gate. One of them, a bright-eyed 10-year-old, pushed a miniature version of Peñalosa's bicycle through the crowd. Suddenly I understood his haste. He had been rushing to pick up his son from school, like other parents were doing that very moment up and down the time zone. Here, in the heart of one of the meanest, poorest cities in the hemisphere, father and son would roll away from the school gate for a carefree ride across the metropolis. This was an unthinkable act in most modern cities. As the sun fell and the Andes caught fire, we arced our way along the wide-open avenues, then west along a highway built for bicycles. The kid raced ahead. At that point, I wasn't sure about Peñalosa's ideology. Who was to say that one way of moving was better than another? How could anyone know enough about the needs of the human soul to prescribe the ideal city for happiness? But for a moment I forgot my questions. I let go of my handlebars and raised my arms in the air of the cooling breeze, and I remembered my own childhood of country roads, after-school wanderings, lazy rides and pure freedom. I felt fine. The city was mine. The journey began. Is urban design really powerful enough to make or break happiness? The question deserves consideration, because the happy city message is taking root around the world. "The most dynamic economies of the 20th century produced the most miserable cities of all," Peñalosa told me over the roar of traffic. "I'm talking about the US Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, cities totally dominated by cars." If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half-century should have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the US and other rich nations such as Canada, Japan and Great Britain. And yet the boom decades of the late 20th century were not accompanied by a boom in wellbeing. The British got richer by more than 40% between 1993 and 2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew. Just before the crash of 2008, a team of Italian economists, led by Stefano Bartolini, tried to account for that seemingly inexplicable gap between rising income and flatlining happiness in the US. The Italians tried removing various components of economic and social data from their models, and found that the only factor powerful enough to hold down people's self-reported happiness in the face of all that wealth was the country's declining social capital: the social networks and interactions that keep us connected with others. It was even more corrosive than the income gap between rich and poor. As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert. The more connected we are to family and community, the less likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes, cancer and depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer. They consistently report being happier. There is a clear connection between social deficit and the shape of cities. A Swedish study <http://www.samfak.umu.se/english/about-the-faculty/news/newsdetailpage/long -distance-commuters-get-divorced-more-often.cid160978> found that people who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40% more likely to divorce. People who live in monofunctional, cardependent neighbourhoods outside urban centres are much less trusting of other people than people who live in walkable neighbourhoods where housing is mixed with shops, services and places to work. A couple of University of Zurich economists, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, compared German commuters' estimation of the time it took them to get to work with their answers to the standard wellbeing question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?" Their finding was seemingly straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people were. Before you dismiss this as numbingly obvious, keep in mind that they were testing not for drive satisfaction, but for life satisfaction. People were choosing commutes that made their entire lives worse. Stutzer and Frey <http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html> found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40% more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. On the other hand, for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love. Daniel Gilbert <http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Edtg/gilbert.htm> , Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling On Happiness <http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=97800071 83135> , explained the commuting paradox this way: "Most good and bad things become less good and bad over time as we adapt to them. However, it is much easier to adapt to things that stay constant than to things that change. So we adapt quickly to the joy of a larger house, because the house is exactly the same size every time. But we find it difficult to adapt to commuting by car, because every day is a slightly new form of misery." The sad part is that the more we flock to highstatus cities for the good life money, opportunity, novelty the more crowded, expensive, polluted and congested those places become. The result? Surveys show that Londoners are among the least happy people in the UK <http://www.govtoday.co.uk/health/44-public-health/11410-london-least-happy- in-the-uk> , despite the city being the richest region in the UK. When we talk about cities, we usually end up talking about how various places look, and perhaps how it feels to be there. But to stop there misses half the story, because the way we experience most parts of cities is at velocity: we glide past on the way to somewhere else. City life is as much about moving through landscapes as it is about being in them. Robert Judge, a 48-year-old husband and father, once wrote to a Canadian radio show explaining how much he enjoyed going grocery shopping on his bicycle. Judge's confession would have been unremarkable if he did not happen to live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the average temperature in January hovers around -17C. The city stays frozen and snowy for almost half the year. Judge's pleasure in an experience that seems slower, more difficult and considerably more uncomfortable than the alternative might seem bizarre. He explained it by way of a story: sometimes, he said, he would pick up his three-year-old son from nursery and put him on the back seat of his tandem bike and they would pedal home along the South Saskatchewan river. The snow would muffle the noise of the city. Dusk would paint the sky in colours so exquisite that Judge could not begin to find names for them. The snow would reflect those hues. It would glow like the sky, and Judge would breathe in the cold air and hear his son breathing behind him, and he would feel as though together they had become part of winter itself. Drivers experience plenty of emotional dividends. They report feeling much more in charge of their lives than public transport users. An upmarket vehicle is loaded with symbolic value that offers a powerful, if temporary, boost in status. Yet despite these romantic feelings, half of commuters living in big cities and suburbs claim to dislike the heroic journey they must make every day. The urban system neutralises their power. Driving in traffic is harrowing for both brain and body. The blood of people who drive in cities is a stew of stress hormones. The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the fight-or-flight juices that, in the short-term, get your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages and help sharpen your alertness, but in the long-term can make you ill. Researchers for Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes <http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/nov/30/research.transport> and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters. But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam, like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles. Why would travelling more slowly and using more effort offer more satisfaction than driving? Part of the answer exists in basic human physiology. We were born to move. Immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car. Stop moving long enough, and your muscles will atrophy. Bones will weaken. Blood will clot. You will find it harder to concentrate and solve problems. Immobility is not merely a state closer to death: it hastens it. Robert Thayer, a professor of psychology at California State University, fitted dozens of students with pedometers <http://www.csulb.edu/misc/inside/archives/vol_58_no_4/1.htm> , then sent them back to their regular lives. Over the course of 20 days, the volunteers answered survey questions about their moods, attitudes, diet and happiness. Within that volunteer group, people who walked more were happier. The same is true of cycling, although a bicycle has the added benefit of giving even a lazy rider the ability to travel three or four times faster than someone walking, while using less than a quarter of the energy. They may not all attain Judge's level of transcendence, but cyclists report feeling connected to the world around them in a way that is simply not possible in the sealed environment of a car, bus or train. Their journeys are both sensual and kinesthetic. In 1969, a consortium of European industrial interests charged a young American economist, Eric Britton <http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/author/worldstreets/> , with figuring out how people would move through cities in the future. Cities should strive to embrace complexity, not only in transportation systems but in human experience, says Britton, who is still working in that field and lives in Paris. He advises cities and corporations to abandon old mobility, a system rigidly organised entirely around one way of moving, and embrace new mobility, a future in which we would all be free to move in the greatest variety of ways. "We all know old mobility," Britton said. "It's you sitting in your car, stuck in traffic. It's you driving around for hours, searching for a parking spot. Old mobility is also the 55-year-old woman with a bad leg, waiting in the rain for a bus that she can't be certain will come. New mobility, on the other hand, is freedom distilled." To demonstrate how radically urban systems can build freedom in motion, Britton led me down from his office, out on to Rue Joseph Bara. We paused by a row of sturdy-looking bicycles. Britton swept his wallet above a metallic post and pulled one free from its berth. "Et voilà! Freedom!" he said, grinning. Since the Paris bike scheme, Vélib' <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/aug/16/ethicalliving.france> , was introduced, it has utterly changed the face of mobility. Each bicycle in the Vélib' fleet gets used between three and nine times every day. That's as many as 200,000 trips a day. Dozens of cities have now dabbled in shared bike programmes, including Lyon, Montreal, Melbourne, New York. In 2010, London introduced a system, dubbed Boris Bikes for the city's bike-mad mayor, Boris Johnson. In Paris, and around the world, new systems of sharing are setting drivers free. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib's first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to repeat wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike, the safer the streets become for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road. There is safety in numbers. So if we really care about freedom for everyone, we need to design for everyone, not only the brave. Anyone who is really serious about building freedom in their cities eventually makes the pilgrimage to Copenhagen. I joined Copenhagen rush hour on a September morning with Lasse Lindholm, an employee of the city's traffic department. The sun was burning through the autumn haze as we made our way across Queen Louise's Bridge. Vapour rose from the lake, swans drifted and preened, and the bridge seethed with a rush-hour scene like none I have ever witnessed. With each light change, cyclists rolled toward us in their hundreds. They did not look the way cyclists are supposed to look. They did not wear helmets or reflective gear. Some of the men wore pinstriped suits. No one was breaking a sweat. Lindholm rolled off a list of statistics: more people that morning would travel by bicycle than by any other mode of transport (37%). If you didn't count the suburbs, the percentage of cyclists in Copenhagen would hit 55%. They aren't choosing to cycle because of any deep-seated altruism or commitment to the environment; they are motivated by self-interest. "They just want to get themselves from A to B," Lindholm said, "and it happens to be easier and quicker to do it on a bike." The Bogotá experiment may not have made up for all the city's grinding inequities, but it was a spectacular beginning and, to the surprise of many, it made life better for almost everyone. The TransMilenio moved so many people so efficiently that car drivers crossed the city faster as well: commuting times fell by a fifth. The streets were calmer. By the end of Peñalosa's term, people were crashing their cars less often and killing each other less frequently, too: the accident rate fell by nearly half, and so did the murder rate, even as the country as a whole got more violent. There was a massive improvement in air quality, too. Bogotáns got healthier. The city experienced a spike in feelings of optimism. People believed that life was good and getting better, a feeling they had not shared in decades. Bogotá's fortunes have since declined. The TransMilenio system is plagued by desperate crowding as its private operators fail to add more capacity yet more proof that robust public transport needs sustained public investment. Optimism has withered. But Bogotá's transformative years still offer an enduring lesson for rich cities. By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values everyone's experience, we can make cities that help us all get stronger, more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can change. This is an edited extract from Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, by Charles Montgomery, published by Penguin at £16.99. Thanks Dave o _ ( \ _ (X)\ /(X)

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The rise of the bicycle-friendly suburb (Atlantic Cities)
by Beth McKechnie 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

The Rise of the Bicycle-Friendly Suburb Sarah Goodyear <http://www.theatlanticcities.com/authors/sarah-goodyear/> | Oct 18, 2013 http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/10/rise-bicycle-friendly-subu… Welcoming bicycles to the streets isn't just an urban thing anymore. Increasingly, according to the new rankings of "Bicycle Friendly Communities" released by the League of American Bicyclists<http://www.bikeleague.org/>this week, suburbs are getting in on the act. Places like Elmhurst, Illinois; Riverside, California; Montclair, New Jersey; and Dublin, Ohio; are among the 32 municipalities making LAB’s list for the first time this year. The list, which ranks towns and cities in a four-tier system from bronze up to platinum (the full list here, PDF<http://bikeleague.org/sites/lab.huang.radicaldesigns.org/files/BFC_Master_L…>), was inaugurated in 2003. It now includes 291 towns and cities in 48 states. *Riverside, California. Image courtesy of Flickr user James May <http://www.flickr.com/photos/52746562@N00/4410359617/in/photolist-7HJfg4-as…>.* In its early years, the list was dominated by larger cities like Seattle and Portland, along with college towns like Davis, California, and Fort Collins, Colorado. But it's growing fast, and a lot of the expansion is coming from conventional suburbs where biking – whether for transportation or recreation -- was a marginal activity just a few years ago. *A new bike rack purchased by the Worthington-Dublin Rotary Club. Image courtesy of Flickr user Don O'Brien <http://www.flickr.com/photos/51096110@N00/7599710714/in/photolist-czyve5>.* Communities submit applications for the League’s consideration on an annual basis, and are evaluated on things like safe bicycle infrastructure, a bike-friendly culture, education for riders, and enforcement of laws protecting people on bikes. Because LAB’s ability to do outreach is limited, municipal leaders are the ones taking the initiative to apply – an indicator in itself. The percentage of suburban communities applying has jumped significantly in the last couple of years, according to Bill Nesper, LAB’s vice president for programs. "It’s not just the usual suspects anymore," he says of the applicant pool. "These are places with longer trip distances and suburban land patterns. They are answering a demand. They are coming to us, and they are competing." Increasingly, Nesper says, suburban leaders are seeking out a "bicycle friendly" designation because they think it makes their communities more attractive to new businesses and residents. He cites Greenville, South Carolina, as another unexpected place that earned a bronze designation this year. Amenities like good bike infrastructure can help set a suburb or small city apart from its sprawling counterparts. "What’s happening is that bicycling is an indicator of a high quality of life," says Nesper. "It helps the community compete." <http://www.theatlanticcities.com/topics/suburbia/> Sarah Goodyear has written about cities for a variety of publications, including *Grist* and *Streetsblog*. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Webinar - New NACTO Urban Street Design Guide, Wed, Nov.6, 2-3pm, EcoCentre
by Beth McKechnie 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

Green Action Centre invites you to join us for a local viewing of the following APBP and NACTO webinar at the EcoCentre (3rd floor, 303 Portage Ave). This will be followed by group discussion of local applications. Detailed description provided below. *Wednesday, Nov. 6th | 2:00-3:00 p.m.* RSVPs are appreciated but not necessary. Hope to see you then! (Please note that this is a free webinar, so if you prefer to watch from your office you can register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/796641226) cheers, Beth (204) 925-3772 ** * * * ** New NACTO Urban Street Design Guide *Wednesday, Nov. 6th | 2:00-3:00 p.m.* The leading experts in street design who contributed to the guide's development will address how this resource will change the face of our streets, the ways you can use it in your community, and how specific topics and elements in the document differ from conventional practice. The NACTO Urban Street Design Guide <http://nacto.org/usdg/> charts the principles and practices of the nation’s foremost engineers, planners and designers working in cities today. The Guide offers a blueprint for designing 21st century streets, and unveils the toolbox and the tactics cities use to make streets safer, more liveable, and more economically vibrant. In this webinar, participants will achieve a better understanding of how and why city streets demand a unique set of design tools specific to their distinct needs and characteristics; will learn how to implement different "interim" design strategies, including parklets, public plazas and temporary safety improvements for bicyclists and pedestrians; will clarify how to utilize the guide as a tool for local and state advocacy, including basic information on NACTO's endorsement campaign for the guide. Each webinar presenter is an expert in street design and a contributor to the guide: - Michael Flynn, Director of Capital Planning, NYC DOT; - Michael King, Principal, Nelson\Nygaard Associates; - Peter Koonce, Division Manager, Signals, Street Lighting & ITS, Portland Bureau of Transportation; and - David Vega-Barachowitz, Director, Designing Cities initiative, NACTO. *NACTO* - The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is an association that represents large cities on transportation issues of local, regional and national significance. NACTO views the transportation departments of major cities as effective and necessary partners in regional and national transportation efforts, promoting their interests in federal decision-making. They facilitate the exchange of transportation ideas, insights and best practices among large cities, while fostering a cooperative approach to key issues facing cities and metropolitan areas. As a coalition of city transportation departments, NACTO is committed to raising the state of the practice for street design and transportation by building a common vision, sharing data, peer-to-peer exchange in workshops and conferences, and regular communication among member cities. For more information about the organization, visit www.natco.org<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?AssociationofPedestr/b5b8593e4e/4474d32d6e/5d5d1b72…> . *APBP *- The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) provides expertise for sustainable transportation and is the only professional membership organization for the discipline of pedestrian and bicycle transportation. APBP members are employees of all levels of government, consulting firms and non-profits who work in the engineering, planning, landscape architecture, police, safety, health and promotion fields and specialize in improving conditions for bicycling and walking. For more information about the organization, visit www.apbp.org<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?AssociationofPedestr/b5b8593e4e/4474d32d6e/21f21a00…> .

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Presentations from 8th Nova Scotia Cycling Summit
by Beth McKechnie 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

(courtesy of Velo Cape Breton) In addition to their enforced 1m passing law, Nova Scotia is making great strides on several fronts thanks to a combination of political will and a growing network of interest groups such as Velo Cape Breton. See: Nova Scotia Cycling Summit Presentations<http://www.velocapebreton.ca/?q=node/429>

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