Hopedance

by Lisa Quinn Traffic Reducing Housing
Santa Barbara provides 42 affordable downtown apartments. First priority is given to residents who work downtown who do not own a vehicle and agree not to own one during their occupancy. (Rent is $50 per month less for residents who do not park a car. All employed household members must work only in the downtown area.) Second priority: residents who work downtown. The 42 unit development has only TWENTY CARS!
www.cities21.org/CasaDeLasFuentes.htm

Eating Good
Foods are shipped thousands of miles to the market. Reduce the carbon on your plate by joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).
www.localharvest.org/csa

Local Green
Ithaca Hours is a local currency system that promotes local economic strength and community self-reliance in and around Ithaca, New York. http://ithacahours.org

Cites to Generate Local Renewable Energy
Under California’s Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, communities can literally take power into their own hands by generating their own electricity. Under the 2002 California law AB117, CCA permits any city or county to facilitate the purchase and sale of electrical energy to its constituents by pooling their demand.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006535.html

People Power
San Francisco, CA voted to build the world’s largest municipal solar power public works project.
www.local.org/independ.html
Corvallis ranks first among Oregon cities with nearly 12.5% of electricity customers supporting renewable energy through Pacific Power green pricing program.
www.pacificpower.net/Homepage/Homepage58962.html

Roots of Change
Roots of Change is a non-profit organization dedicated to transitioning to an economically viable, environmentally sustainable, socially responsible and local food supply for the entire state of California by the year 2030.
www.rocfund.org

California Roundtable Alliance
A collaborative formed by National Resources Defense Council and involving leading environmental, agricultural, labor and government organizations in California. Presently, the Roundtable is exploring the development of a certification system that will ensure that California maintains the world’s highest standards of sustainability in agriculture.
www.agfuturesalliance.com

Vancouver Port Ties Fees to Ship Emission Levels
The Port of Vancouver, Canada’s charges international cargo ships fees that are based partly on a vessel’s smokestack emissions. The Port of Vancouver harbor due’s system will reward ships that take steps to reduce pollution, such as burning lower-sulfur fuel, by charging them lower dues than it does to ships with higher emission levels.

Footprint
Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.
www.carbonfootprint.com/index.html

Bicycle Barometer
The city of Bolzano installed the first Italian “bicycle barometer” on one of the main bike lanes of the city also thanks to the VIANOVA Project. The table totals the number of bikers (in both directions) on the present day and since the device has been installed. In less than 10 days almost 80,000 bikers passed through it. (http://tinyurl.com/ys87hf)

Strategic Sustainable Planning (SSP) Introduction to Post Oil Cities
SSP volunteers in LA, Houston, Phoenix, Santiago, Melboure, Hamburg, Cairo, Venice, Athens, Juneau Alaska are providing research to Post Oil Cities. Public involvement in evolving a new data base has a map set used to question the sustainability of parts of Metro Vancouver given energy price crunch and product shortages to come.
www.plancanada.com

Depaving and planting work in San Francisco
Neighborhood Treasures are those special and sometimes surprising things each part of town has which make it more interesting and delightful. Neighborhood Treasures are what make you smile to yourself when you’re walking down the street. They are things you want to share with your friends and grandkids.
www.plantsf.org/FeaturedProjects.html

A Community Solution
Better Environmentally Sound Transportation’s (BEST) Neighborhood Streets Program aims to assist neighborhood groups in their efforts to address local traffic concerns such as volume, speed, safety, and loss of community. The Street Reclaiming Project, has assisted 3 pilot neighborhoods to engage in “Street Reclaiming” activities and produced a community guidebook to help people reclaim their streets.
www.best.bc.ca/streets/guidebook.html

Neighborhood Food Shed
San Luis Obispo County provides a local distribution system set up among people using an interactive website. The intent is share produce with others that otherwise would go to waste.
www.neighborhoodproduce.org

What’s On Your Plate?
Find food in your neighborhood and when you travel that is healthful, humane, better for the environment, and that supports family farmers.
www.eatwellguide.org

Campaign for Bay Area Localization
Bay Localize has joined forces with Redefining Progress, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, International Forum on Globalization and the Center for Sustainable Economy in a campaign to localize the Bay Area economy.
www.baylocalize.org

Public Service Broadcasting for a post carbon world
The website provides the users easy ways to search by sections and get audio clips of well known people in the field discussing solutions in a post carbon world.
http://globalpublicmedia.com/topics/relocalization

Green Drinks
An organic, self organizing network of people who work in the environmental field looking for others who work and live in the same area to connect with over a beer.
www.greendrinks.org

Bike Works
Students in Seattle ages 9 to 17 learn bicycle repair over eight class sessions, then swap hours of community repair for their own recycled cycle. It takes 24 hours of “Earn-a-Bike time” outside of class to earn a bike. www.bikeworks.org

Plate Project
The plate project or le projet des assiettes, was created in Moscow, ID to find an inexpensive way of acquiring multiple place settings for events without having to use disposable plastic dishes and utensils.
http://www.pcei.org/pcc/plate_project.htm

Cool Solutions are prepared every issue by Lisa Quinn. To send her a cool solution blurb with url, please send to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .