Quote

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

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Alex Steffen
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Environmentalist
Writer
Oakland
California
Transit
Feet
Welcome
Neighborhoods
Moving
Areas
Describes
Experience
Remains
Another
City
Bicycle
Feel
Built
Neighborhood
Feels
Deep
Area
Way
Move
Foot
Cities
Pleasant

More quotes by Alex Steffen

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Urban retrofitting: creating different sorts of spaces and uses out of places that are already there.
Alex Steffen
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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
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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
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Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.
Alex Steffen
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Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.
Alex Steffen
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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
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If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.
Alex Steffen
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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
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You don't change the world by hiding in the woods, wearing a hair shirt, or buying indulgences in the form of 'Save the Earth' bumper stickers. You do it by articulating a vision for the future and pursuing it with all the ingenuity humanity can muster.
Alex Steffen
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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
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It's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got.
Alex Steffen
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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
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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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We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.
Alex Steffen
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By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.
Alex Steffen
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Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.
Alex Steffen
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I think we're going to start to see a new model of civic advocacy where people get together once in a while to protest, but it's more about an ongoing, sustained engagement in issues, networks and communities about which people care.
Alex Steffen
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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
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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
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The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.
Alex Steffen