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In almost all city governments in America, the small group of people who don't want change are able to block change.
Alex Steffen
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Alex Steffen
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Environmentalist
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Oakland
California
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More quotes by Alex Steffen
At its very heart, Worldchanging is about using the best of people's new ideas, bringing them together and applying them to the massive problems that we all face.
Alex Steffen
The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on.
Alex Steffen
Deep walkability describes a city that is built in such a way that you can move from one area to another on foot, on bicycle, on transit and have an experience that remains a pleasant one, that you feel you are welcome not just in the neighborhood but moving between neighborhoods.
Alex Steffen
I think there's a gigantic generation gap in terms of how people understand the Internet and how much they think technology is an important factor in social change.
Alex Steffen
We have to craft new political realities, not only in places like India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, but here at home as well. Another world is possible.
Alex Steffen
There is no such thing as garbage, just useful stuff in the wrong place.
Alex Steffen
Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.
Alex Steffen
Cities generate most of the global economy, and most of its energy use, resource demands and climate emissions. How we build cities over the next decades will largely determine whether we can deliver a bright green future.
Alex Steffen
Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience.
Alex Steffen
Urban retrofitting: creating different sorts of spaces and uses out of places that are already there.
Alex Steffen
Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.
Alex Steffen
Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf.
Alex Steffen
By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.
Alex Steffen
For carbon-neutral cities, there are things worth talking about in how our consumption patterns can change - sharing goods, etc. - but those are a fraction of the impacts of transportation and building energy use. If we need to choose priority actions, the most important things are to densify, provide transit, and green the buildings.
Alex Steffen
It's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got.
Alex Steffen
For most people, using the Internet broadens their sense of who 'we' is and actually ends up leaving us in a place of greater compassion and understanding. It leaves us more connected to a larger group of people and more at one with a lot more people in our community.
Alex Steffen
The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.
Alex Steffen
There’s more to being an environmentalist than occasionally signing an online petition and mailing your check to the Sierra Club. Really the most effective environmental actions you can take have to do with crafting your home and surroundings, your workplace decisions and your investment habits.
Alex Steffen
Cities are responsible for the vast majority of the creation of the economy. They're also places into which we pour the vast majority of resources, the vast majority of energy and the places where a huge percentage of the decisions about how systems are built and how products designed, etc., happen.
Alex Steffen
There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.
Alex Steffen
