At one point I just lurked. It seems like this cute thing, especially in the face of my rampant desire to share. She/They, sometimes He as a treat. Nny11Writes is the original content blog (mostly), guess who refuses to update their header and avatar for 9 years? Hey-O!
You Have More Power Than You Think You Do: A Case Study In Getting Shit Done
I don't live in a walkable city.
I live in a mid-sized Texas town that only realizes that there are people who don't drive when TXDoT gives them money for active transportation infrastructure.
People constantly tell me that you just cannot walk or ride a bike in this city. It's impossible!
I do it anyway, because I firmly believe that solarpunk is a useless aesthetic if you aren't living it as best you can. We don't need technology to solve our problems we need will.
Also I do volunteer work on the political side of the local animal shelter and so I find myself at city hall several times a year and there's no bike rack.
Or rather there wasn't a bike rack.
I complained to someone, politely, informing them that I am doing this volunteer work and I don't have any safe place to lock my bike and that locking it to a handrail is inconvenient for everyone and also hideous.
A few months later a single staple-style bike rack was installed at city hall. It's not much, but I got sent a photo of someone else who got to use it before I did, clearly there was a need, if small.
Then I turned my gaze to the local grocery store, which had a bike rack, but the bike rack was terrible. It was too short for modern tire sizes, it was placed too close to the wall so one side was useless, and it was generally pretty cramped.
It took some time, but an advocate friend told me to contact the property owner instead of banging my head against the wall contacting HEB itself, and so I sent another polite complaint with a photo, explaining why it wasn't a very good bike rack and it would be really cool if we had a different one with better placement.
And about two months later, we have new staple-style racks at the grocery store, properly placed for maximum parking.
It's not a new bike lane. It's not a removal of parking minimums. It's not infill development or an active transportation advisory board.
They're just bike racks.
But that's the beauty of it. I, a person with an email address, some basic "how to be firm but polite while making an argument" skills, and a willingness to work out who to contact, fixed two problems for the local community. Trust me, I have had people wait on me to unlock my bike so they could have the "good spot." I was not the only person annoyed at the old rack.
It can be done. You're not powerless. Solarpunk doesn't have to be a wishful aesthetic.
A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high. Western civiliza
"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.
Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way that’s a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.
Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.
Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.
In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.
Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.
Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.
No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.
The street life is lively—there are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartments—a big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.
“Once you pull the cars out,” Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, “there’s so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.”
His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.
Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.
Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.
“Culdesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix that’s often seen as the poster child for car dependency,” says Erin Boyd, Culdesac’s government relations and external affairs lead. “This success has shifted the conversation around what’s possible in American development.”
one of my friends in a discord server was talking about how they were nervous about their first scheduled acupuncture appointment. another friend offered to do a tarot reading for them. sent this picture.
“oh? you have kids?” “No” i reply. “…rabbits?” “No,” again I reply. you look closer. inside is a roomba. ‘its almost time to feed him!’ i say. your eyes ask a handful of questions, but you remain silent. i sprinkle a handful of dirt in the enclosure.
self care is also being honest with yourself about your negative habits and mistakes. it’s also taking ownership of your faults and growing from them. self care is diverting from a negative space to a positive one. creating light and balance. blooming. watering your own flowers. being gentle but honest with yourself.
so take care.
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