Advocacy & Safety - Great show alert - PBS---> Blueprint America

This was just on in Florida:

http://channel2.typepad.com/channel_2/2009/05/blueprint-america.html

Very interesting. A lot of bicycle (or none, in Denvers case) related stuff.

It gives sort of a CLiff Notes version of how the car became our god
and what NYC, Portland Or and Denver Co. did when they had federal
transit issues forced on them. Denver gets portrayed pretty shamefully
from its I-470 problems to the people they interviewed about cars.
As to be expected, NYC and Portland get some good footage.

Im not sure if PBS in your states will have it but if they do I would suggest
watching it :beer:

Hm, it's on tonight here, thanks. Should be fun to hear the part about Denver where I was before here. They had a good bus system. Went everywhere on the bus. (It's E-470, btw. I never went near it.)

See the whole thing online

PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/road-to-the-future/video-full-documentary/648/)

Lem, thanks for the heads-up.

Excellent video thanks for sharing.

That is very good.

Interesting comparison between Portland and Denver.

According to the documentary, both cities were very similar in 1970. Concerned citizens in one city saw the writing on the wall and undertook an ambitious and disciplined plan to prevent California type sprawl. They said no to federal highway funds earmarked for new freeways; they said no to developers salivating over cheap land on the rural fringe; they drew lines on the map beyond which suburban development would not be tolerated. They adopted Draconian, some might even say un-American, policies which in effect dictated to whom agricultural property owners could and could not sell their land.

The other city continued on its merry way, greedily grabbing federal highway money whenever possible and laying out the red carpet for any developer who came their way.

Forty years later, one city has created an urban landscape in which alternate forms of transportation, including cycling, are thriving, while the other, following the more typical North American model (and similar to my own city, I’m afraid), is hopelessly entrenched in a losing battle to add more automobile capacity in service of its far-flung exurbs.

This was just on . . .


See the whole thing online

PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/road-to-the-future/video-full-documentary/648/)

Thank you! I would have missed this one.

Great program. What I found most interesting is the statistic that Manhattan residents have a very low carbon footprint. It seems counterintuitive at first, but then you realize that most New Yorkers don't have cars, don't travel by car and live in relatively small quarters, which reduces overall heating and cooling.

You can watch almost any PBS program online.



...live in relatively small quarters, which reduces overall heating and cooling.

It's actually the large size of the buildings that make them efficient. Often each apartment/condo only has one outside wall, while singles family homes have 4 walls and the roof.

There are at least 15 suburbs in the Portland metropolitan area, and they are just as autocentric and strip mall oriented as any other suburb I have visited. Many people escape the Metro government's development policies by living in the northern suburbs of Washington state or by jumping the UGB entirely into the expanding commuter towns that lie outside of metro's jurisdiction. All self-congratulatory discussion of Portland's land use policies is just that: self-congratulation.

See the whole thing online

PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/road-to-the-future/video-full-documentary/648/)

thanks, i enjoyed it.

There are at least 15 suburbs in the Portland metropolitan area, and they are just as autocentric and strip mall oriented as any other suburb I have visited. Many people escape the Metro government's development policies by living in the northern suburbs of Washington state or by jumping the UGB entirely into the expanding commuter towns that lie outside of metro's jurisdiction. All self-congratulatory discussion of Portland's land use policies is just that: self-congratulation.

Of course, they conveniently ommitted these facts because they were not consistent with the portrait they were trying to paint. Nevertheless, the program did provide some insight into how North American cities have evolved to their current shameful state, and the monumental task ahead of us to transform them for less dependence on the automobile.