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Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives – and may even extend our stay on Earth.

Alex Steffen

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Alex Steffen
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Environmentalist
Writer
Oakland
California
Minerals
Water
Species
Survives
Earth
Clean
Extend
May
Air
Predictable
Human
Resources
Soil
Humans
Pay
Even
Stay
Weather
Mineral
Long
Animal
Diversity
Dividends
Race
Plant

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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.
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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.
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It's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got.
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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.
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By fundamentally changing how we design the places and systems that enable our daily lives, we can slash emissions way beyond the immediate carbon savings - because our own personal emissions are just the tip of a vast iceberg of energy and resources consumed far from our view.
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The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.
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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.
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Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.
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Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Cities offer us powerful leverage on our most stubborn, wasteful practices. Long commutes in our cars, big power bills from our energy-hogging buildings, shopping trips to buy stuff that'll spend a few short months in our homes and long centuries in our landfills.
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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Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.
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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.
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There is no such thing as garbage, just useful stuff in the wrong place.
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Carbon zero simply means that the emissions you are releasing either are zero or balance out to zero.
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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.
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