Category: environment
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A bumpy ride into the electric car future
So, we bought a thing. When I asked the dealer to take a photo he said “Do you want the big bow?” and I was like “Yes please sir I would very much like the big bow!” It is a Nissan LEAF, a fully electric vehicle. This is our first electric vehicle. In fact, it…
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Event: Community planning workshop
The City of Kelowna is holding public consultations in an effort to re-imagine what the Capri-Landmark area will look like in the next few decades. This week I was invited to speak at one of the workshops about my perspective on active transportation. Essentially, I gave the same talk that I did at OnPoint last…
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Conscious labour and supreme blessings
To be well caring of mother, of father, to look after spouse and children, to engage in a harmless occupation, this is a blessing supreme. This line is from a discourse with the Buddha known as the Mangala Sutta. The Buddha is approached in a grove and is asked about the “blessings supreme.” He lists…
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On stage at OnPoint: An argument from culture
Me providing (unpaid) plug of OGO Carshare on stage. Photo credit: Deon Nel Photography Urban Systems rounded out their series of workshops on housing, the economy, and climate with their fourth and final workshop on Transportation. The evening focused on thinking about how transportation could enable vibrancy in the community. I shared the panel with…
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Event: OnPoint – Do we need a new relationship with transportation and mobility in our region?
What are the possibilities for city beyond transportation? How do we think about transportation in terms of making a city more vibrant, rather than a deadening concrete grid where we travel isolated in our cars? On December 8th I will be on the panel for the Urban Systems On Point Series “Getting Unstuck – Do…
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Thoughts on Citizen Energy
The “right to the city” is described by David Harvey as: The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the…
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Citizen Energy
On Sunday (18 Sep) we had a special guest give a talk about how citizens installed solar panels on public institutions in Ikoma City, Japan. Kusunoki Tadashi is a boardmember of Citizen Energy Ikoma (市民エネルギー生駒), a citizens group who took the fight against climate change into their own hands by leveraging public space to produce…