Also discussed here: Towards a Zero Carbon Vision for UK Transport (68 page pdf, John Whitelegg, Gary Haq,Howard Cambridge and Harry Vallack, Stockholm Environment Institute July 2010)
Today we review a short video from the World Streets blog by Prof. John Whitelegg, an expert in what makes a sustainable city, mainly in terms of transportation. He points out the importance of the choices made in cities to either promote the use of vehicles and roads to carry them or to look for more sustainable, less polluting options such as car free housing, reduced parking spaces etc – all in the face of the challenge of climate change mitigation and the goal to achieve a carbon free city.
Key Quotes:
“what experts and professionals call sustainability….would be a city, for example, that has a lot less noise, a lot better air quality, a lot less traffic, a lot more potential for people to stand around and talk and meet their neighbors and not be drowned by noise and disturbance and stink”
“The challenges tend to be things like how do we actually deal with the development of the city with growing population [and] growing levels of economic activity, things like water shortages and important resource problems that cities are facing.. to actually reduce the amount of resources that we use, metal, concrete, and so on, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions”
“The things that can be done and should be done are still a bit frightening for politicians, really, but they are about reallocating space, so that space is for people—and not for things that weigh a tonne and are made of metal and kill children when they hit them”
“A zero carbon road transport system has enormous potential to deliver post-Kyoto GHG reductions and to embed the transport sector firmly within a wider process of societal change that can move beyond rhetoric and target setting and deliver a decarbonised future”
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