Tag Archives: “Smart growth”

Living "off the grid": will state utilities allow it?

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One of you guys wrote in recently to ask about the whole “smart grid” thing, asking me to investigate just what state-licensed utilities will demand to know about what we’re doing on our property with their juice. (Opening the question, too, whether the state at any point considers our electricity to be our own.) I’m working on that one… stand by for an update within the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, some of my grandfather’s countrymen are conducting a large scale experiment in self-reliance, at the community level, that is.

more about “Islands of self-sufficiency < Banking…“, posted with vodpod

Bordertown carnage

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Is one of America’s “best cities” cracking up?

Charming. Alan Flores-Ocon, 23, is the registered owner of a pickup truck that killed an elderly man in Mesa, Ariz., last week. Mesa police are still trying to find Flores-Ocon.

Mesa, Ariz. is one of the best cities to live in, according to Money magazine. Unless, of course, you are the elderly man who died in the street last week after being knocked down by a hit-and-run driver.

Rather than assisting the man, bystanders in the Mexican neighborhood where he died snatched-up his groceries. They also robbed a witness trying to save the man.

The driver of the pickup truck fled the scene.

Incidents such as this, sadly, are contributing to the mistrust between native-born Americans in the Phoenix-Mesa area and its fast-growing Mexican immigrant population.

830,000 immigrants were in Phoenix-Mesa in 2006, according to government census records. (This includes children born to immigrants in the area). Mexicans make up the largest single group in Phoenix-Mesa’s immigrant population.

Violent crime in Mesa has increased 8 percent between 2006 and 2007, according to Mesa Police Department records.

clipped from www.breitbart.tv
Crowd Steals Groceries From Dying Elderly Man Hit by Truck
clipped from www.dailymotion.com

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Smart growth: dumb about safety

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Density is Job One: No room in “smart streets” for emergency vehicles

Imagine biking to the café one morning in your “smart growth” community, where everything you think you need is just a few blocks away.

With a coffee and a scone in your basket, you circle back to your subsidized, compact live/work flat.

But suddenly, a bus clips tyou with its side-view mirror, sending you head-first into the curb.

Passersby hover over you as you lay dying. Some call for help. But no help will come, because no ambulance can squeeze down the narrow street to reach you.

“Smart streets,” narrow, multi-use passageways filled with pedestrians, buses and bicycles, are a key feature in the plans for human resettlement called for in the U.N.’s Agenda 21.

But emergency vehicles (whether by accident or design) will not fit down the streets planned for “smart growth” communities, the EPA now admits.

The EPA this month announced a two- year, $150,000 grant to address the concerns of police and fire officials, who have been rejecting local smart growth plans, citing the risks they pose to public safety. (See link and excerpt, below.)

It is a small amount, and perhaps indicative of the government’s concern for safety within the human habitat zones.

clipped from www.epa.gov

Smart Growth Streets and Emergency Response
A fundamental part of smart growth development is the design of the street network. To make the roadway system safe and inviting for pedestrians, cyclists and others, smart growth street design is typically characterized by: narrower widths, tighter turning radii, and on-street parking. Communities are also pursuing narrower street design in an effort to reduce on-site stormwater run-off and meet their water quality goals.
However, in many places across the country, as developers and city officials try to design these types of streets, they are finding that local fire/emergency response officials will not approve them. Emergency responders express concern that the narrower streets may impede access and maneuverability for their vehicles and in turn, may increase response time. In some instances, communities have been unable to move forward with smart growth plans because of emergency response concerns.

Think tank: depopulation, brain-chipping on the horizon

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One of the lucky ones, according to futurists.

An organization headed by a former World Bank president the author of “Future Shock” predicts a dismal future for Americans.

24 million disabled Americans, most suffering from diseases caused by excess consumption, will require special public transportation to go to treatment centers, according to the World Future Society.

The WFS, whose directors include former World Bank president and U.S Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, and the futurist author Alvin Toffler, also predicts that the able-bodied will flee to other parts of the world, such as China and India, for work.

And healthy or not, young or old, most can look forward to being brain-chipped, and connected permanently to a global computer network, according to the WFS.

The WFS portrays the brain-chipping scenario as one of the few pluses on its list.

More of the WFS’s grim forecasts for the next 25 years: China’s drinking water supply will be virtually depleted, and global warming-generated super storms will cost hundreds of billions of dollars in damages annually.

Link and excerpt, to some of the predictions, are below.

clipped from www.wfs.org
WFS Image

Forecast #1: Generation Y will migrate heavily overseas.
#2: Dwindling supplies of water in China will impact the global economy.
#3: Workers will increasingly choose more time over more money.
#4: We’ll incorporate wireless technology into our thought processing by 2030.
#5: Children’s “nature deficit disorder” will grow as a health threat.

Ride the bus: wireless net to attract commuters

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Perhaps internet access will make them happy.

Buses, at least in Boston, are filthy and grossly inefficient. Accidents and shootings are common, although the police are quick to assure uninjured passengers when they were not targeted in gangster-on-gangster hits.

But since buses will be the primary mode of ground transportation in U.N.-defined urban habitats, officials and the media are trying to sweeten the experience for city dwellers.

Motorola, MIT and a supportive Boston Globe (for which I am a columnist) this week made the case for adding wireless internet access and TVs to buses, to lure individuals out of their cars.

They claim that wireless connections between bus riders will foster the growth of urban habitat areas, or “urban gardens,” as sociologist Federico Casalegno called them in the Boston Globe on Sunday (link and excerpt, below).

Casalegno, who had just designed a futuristic-looking prototype bus station at MIT, is collaborating with the university’s “Smart Cities” group, which is headed by the architect and urban planner William J. Mitchell.

But Casalegno’s real job (which the Globe article does not mention) is working for Motorola, where he is a manager.

Motorola‘s and Mitchell’s plans do not allow for weekend excursions to the country, let alone opportunities to reside permanently outside the city.

But ubiquitous wireless connections will benefit Motorola, and a Sovietized transportation system will help cities such as Boston comply with the U.N.’s Agenda 21.

In his book, “e-topia,” Mitchell describes future urban centers “characterized by live/work dwellings and 24-hour pedestrian-scale neighborhoods,” according to his publisher.

And Motorola’s current vision, according to Monday’s Financial Times, is “seamless connectivity”: access to information “at any time, on any device, and anywhere.”

For more about Agenda 21, listen to Alan Watt‘s May 2 and May 3 audio blurbs, which are here and here.

clipped from www.boston.com

“Bus 2.0″

The Boston Globe, May 6, 2007

From Boston to Brazil, city planners and transportation gurus are reimagining the possibilities of the humble motorbus, using high-tech ‘smart mobility’ to challenge the preeminence of the car — and revive the urban commons.
Much of the most innovative thinking now focuses on improving the passenger experience, instead of the more difficult challenge of moving buses faster along crowded streets. But city planners, armed with affordable global-positioning and computer technology, hope that meeting these seemingly modest goals can make bus trips a far more pleasurable, even productive, experience.