Major kudos are due to Mayor Bloomberg, I'd say, whose plan for remaking New York green and sustainable seems ... frankly, awesome.
127 projects that are likely to make a lot of people angry, but from this little West Coast burg, it looks like good planning. Most controversial will likely be the $8 daily fee for cars who enter Manhattan south of 86th Street. Least controversial seems to be cultivating mussels to the rivers to help clean them out.
Glad to see him and Schwarzenegger (who introduced Bloomberg) standing apart as beingly strongly pro-green but still Republican. It's certainly a welcome change from other Republican leadership. And if 'going green' can become a bi-partisan agreement, this country will really be moving in the right direction.
Thanks, Mayor.
Now, what does Tacoma have up their sleeve? ... I'm think we need to do a dramatic expansion of Wright Park and add a lot more trees.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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4 comments:
Got plenty of blocks in and around the old brewery district that would make great parks. Mix in some community gardens here and there and you'll have yourself a nice mix of park and urban growth.
I just really hope some of those lots can be allocated as such before foundations are poured.
I'd like to see a major effort to remove the invasive ivy that's killing old maples and other trees in the city's ravines. Ivy makes trees -- like those that are leaning against the I St. bridge by Magoo's -- a lot more vulnerable to falling down in windstorms. And once ivy takes over, forests can't regenerate.
It's ironic because New York City's residents already have the smallest ecological footprints of any major city in the country--far smaller than San Francisco, Seattle and everywhere in between. The major reasons for this is the absence of car culture on a scale seen elsewhere and the fact that everything is mixed use and people walk everywhere. People measure distances by number of blocks. When I lived in Brooklyn, the corner bodega was 4 blocks away and the movie theater 19 blocks. When you're walking, those distances pass pretty quickly. If there's anything Tacoma could learn from NYC about being green, it's increasing the density, abandoning those ugly Craftsman houses in favor of apartment blocks, investing in useful public transportation, and not driving their kids two blocks to school. Another reason why NYC rules and everywhere else, including Tacoma, sucks.
Wasn't the mayor of Seattle the guy who started, or one of the founding mayors, of the movement to have cities sign up to the Kyoto accords, with a requirement to implement real policies to reach real goals for reducing greenhouse gases at the city level?
And, aren't most of those cities, especially the large ones, largely governed by Democrats? Also, note, apart from Bloomberg and Arnold, NYC and CA are governed by Democratic legislatures. These guys are just implementing what their legislatures have passed, and of course they get to be in the spotlight.
Bloomberg & Arnold are creatures of their electorate - both NYC and CA like to have Repub leaders of their executive govt. But, the only role Bloomberg or Arnold will play in the national Republican Party is as window dressing. For every Arnold there are a dozen Tancredo's, Brownbacks, or DeLays.
I imagine Arnold will get a primetime speaking slot at the next Republican national convention. Do you think DeLay will too?
Roland
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