News from Elsewhere

This was one of the pledges of Lutfur Rahman, who was elected new mayor in May. His Aspire party won a majority, replacing the Labour administration, which had introduced the “liveable streets” to tackle congestion and air pollution and to encourage more residents to cycle, walk and use public transport. 
The new administration said it will review the restrictions where they have added to congestion on main roads, obstructed emergency vehicles and made it hard for vulnerable residents to access their streets. 

There has been justified excitement around the idea of rewilding over the past few years, with projects popping up all over the UK that aim to restore wildlife and encourage regenerative farming practices. It is now generally accepted that monoculture – largely brought on by the expansion of farmland – is bad for our countryside. But what about our cities

Like natural ecosystems, cities also used to be complex and diverse places that hosted a whole range of different activities. Our streets were public spaces, used for many purposes: work, trade, play, socialising and transportation.
Rebecca Solnit describes our relationship to our city streets perfectly in her book Wanderlust:

“The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organised around citizenship – around participation in public life.” And that is how it once was.
Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet are the authors of Movement:

How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives (Scribe), translated by Fiona Graham.

Further reading
Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (Granta, £9.99)
Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton (MIT, £25)
Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet by Carl H. Nightingale (CUP, £25)

If you’re worried about climate change, consider sharing a car instead. #ClimateCrisis
Jo  Balham Retweeted
ShareOurCars @shareourcars
A reminder that owning and driving a car is the equivalent carbon to 20 flights to Rome per year. If you’re worried about climate change, consider sharing a car instead. #ClimateCrisis

Finland’s goal to go net zero by 2035 and then carbon negative was based on equity as well as science, but it won’t be easy to reverse forest loss

Finland has passed arguably the world’s most ambitious climate target into law. It aims to be the first developed country to reach net zero, in 2035, and net negative – absorbing more CO2 than it emits – by 2040.
According to Net Zero Tracker, only South Sudan has a more ambitious net zero date than 2035 and, as a developing country, its 2030 target is highly dependent on international finance.
The target was set based on analysis by a group of independent economists from the Finnish climate change panel. They worked out what Finland’s fair share was of the 420 GT of carbon dioxide that the world can emit and still have a two-thirds chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Thalia Verkade

We take it for granted that the streets outside out homes are designed for movement from A to B, nothing more. But what happens if we radically rethink how we use these public spaces? Could we change our lives for the better?
Our dependence on cars is damaging our health – and the planet’s. The Dutch seem to have the right idea, with thousands of bike highways, but even then, what happens to pedestrians or people who want to cycle at a more leisurely pace? What about children playing outside their homes? Or wildlife, which enriches our local areas? Why do we prioritise traffic above all else?

Nicu Calcea
In 2005, Rebecca was looking for a place to live. She chose a nice street in Bromley, London, just next to the quiet Crystal Palace Park and relatively low on traffic.
“It was the wide, avenue-like appearance of the road, with its villas and Victorian houses, that I loved about the road,” she tells City Monitor.

This ambivalence is evident in the secretary of state’s foreword to the plan. At one point he says, “We must make public transport, cycling and walking the natural first choice for all who can take it”. Yet, elsewhere, he says, “It’s not about stopping people doing things: it’s about doing the same things differently … We will still drive on improved roads, but increasingly in zero emission cars.”

Nicu Calcea @nicucalcea · Jul 12
The traffic that was once flowing through motorways and other major rows is now spilling into your backstreet.