Streets For All - a social justice issue

We are among the many endorsers of the Streets For All Seattle campaign. This is a campaign to make sure Seattle lives up to its fine words about building a street grid that works well for all users, not just those that have cars. This means continuing to improve the pedestrian environment, bicycle infrastructure and transit network. In the short term, the campaign is focussed on raising $30 million in new dedicated annual revenue to stave off cuts in bus service, double the city’s commitment to the underfunded Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plans, and build critical elements of Seattle’s transportation infrastructure.

There are a lot of good reasons to support this, including public safety, the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the health impacts of driving, the city's mandate to achieve carbon neutrality and the state's mandate to reduce motor vehicle miles traveled. Today I want to talk about another: social justice.

It's depressingly common to see sustainable urbanism painted as a luxury for the rich, but in fact it's car-dependent cities that fail the poor. Owning and driving a car is stunningly expensive - on average over $9,500 per year according to AAA. That's not far short of the entire annual income of someone living on the poverty line, and while it's certainly possible to run a car more cheaply than this average it's unavoidably an expensive thing to own and use. By contrast, a typical bus pass (one zone, including peak times) costs $972 per year for an adult and considerably less for youth. Or a solid, reliable new bike costs under $500 to buy and very little to keep in good working order after that. But the practicality of these alternatives depends heavily on where someone lives: like most cities Seattle has a fairly strong relationship between property values and rents and the ease of getting around without a car. This makes the extra costs associated with running a car effectively a penalty for not being able to afford to live in one of the more central, better-connected neighbourhoods in town, which serves to worsen wealth inequality.

To make things worse, there is a strong correlation between race and car ownership, so car-biased infrastructure is also white-biased infrastructure. And then there are all the people who can't drive, whether through disability, old age or being too young - all of whom are left out by car-centric infrastructure.

Streets For All is trying to fix this pressing inequity by directing more of our limited civic resources to transport infrastructure that doesn't require a car to use. There are a few ways you can help:

1. Write to the City Council. Letters and emails to the Council are counted, and seeing a wave of support for something does sway their deliberations.
2. Go to a budget hearing and speak up for this cause. This cycle's hearings will be in Northgate on September 29th, South Seattle Community College on October 13th, and the council chamber on October 26th - more details in this PDF.
3. Come to a PARK(ing) Day event tomorrow (Friday), to reclaim a little space from the car. It's a simple, fun way to show what else is possible. Parking spots around town will be reclaimed to turn them into temporary parks - here's a PDF map of the sites.

Tour de Fat recap

As promised, we spent the day of the Tour de Fat staffing the "Compost Offices" for New Belgium. It was a fun day, and a chance to learn a lot about how waste reduction works on the ground, and a bit about the company (check out their sustainability page - it's impressively comprehensive).

Lessons learned:

• An event like this can be run with minimal environmental impact: for example we managed a 95% waste diversion rate. I lost track of the exact amounts, but most of that was compost, with a small proportion of recycling, and only the remnant 5% going to landfill.
• Doing this takes a lot more work on the day than just dumping everything, and a lot of planning; one thing I was impressed with, for example, was that the food vendors had been pre-vetted for their ability to provide all compostable packaging.
• Staffing the waste stations makes a huge difference—we found a lot of inappropriately sorted garbage on the morning, from having left the bins out in the park overnight, but everyone is co-operative when pointed to the right bin.
• It didn't matter that the beer cups said COMPOST in big black letters on one side, or that there were signs up listing what went into which bin - people are creatures of habit enough that most automatically took those towards the recycling bin.
• But there are visual cues we can give people which help; a sort of Design With Intent for waste sorting. Here are two examples:
  • If you look at the picture below, the tiny office trashcan is for landfill waste, while the other two were recycling and compost - that made everyone who wanted to landfill stop and think. It was an accident originally—I hadn't realised we'd be handling landfill waste too, until it was too late to get official-looking bins for it so I improvised and raided our office—but it worked so well that I'll definitely repeat this next year and get intermediate-sized bins for recycling.
  • After this picture was taken, one of our volunteers (Tysan) hit on the idea of closing the lid on the recycling bins, to make people pause before dropping compostable cups in.
• And finally, one that I was taught repeatedly as a computer science student: document everything. Sustainable Seattle has done this job at the Tour de Fat before, but the people who did it in previous years have moved on and I had to rediscover a lot of things. I'm writing it all down, so even if it's not me next year they can do a better job of co-ordinating and spend half as much time on it.

A huge thank you goes out to:

• Everyone who volunteered on the day, especially the couple of people who stayed for much longer than you had signed up for.
• New Belgium Brewing for taking the sustainability of the event so seriously, and Brian Bogan there for being patient when I had to ask all these things he expected me to already know from last year.
• Cedar Grove Composting for collecting the material and turning it into lovely compost that will be used in Seattle parks, among other places.

Bike events today and tomorrow

A couple more announcements worth sharing:

TONIGHT from the Belltown Pull-Apart, a bike shop specialising in reusing old parts:

Come and join us for festivities and merriment as we roll through Belltown in style. We’ll kick of this year’s Seattle Founder’s Day festival with a bang. Dress to impress and have some fun. The ride starts at 7:30 from Belltown’s bike headquarters, Belltown Pull-Apart and winds its way past some notable features before ending at Pintxo Bar, 2207 2nd Ave. Bring you helmets, horns, and freak flags. Don’t have a bike? No worries. Belltown Pull-Apart rents ‘em out. Plan on a 1-hour ride. We’ll start things off early with the musical stylings of the Desert Rats. Come one, come all!

TOMORROW from Alleycat Acres, an urban farming collective and fiscal sponsoree of Sustainable Seattle:

This Saturday, the Bikestravaganza: Off the Chainring Tour, a self-described "DIY bike summit roadshow" is coming to Seattle. It will be happening on Saturday 8/14 from 7-9pm at Ada's Technical Books at 713 Broadway East. Alleycat Acres and Ada's Technical Books are sponsoring the local event to ensure it is free and accessible to you. But what do urban farming and books have to do with bicycle advocacy you may ask? Everything!

While Alleycat Acres focuses on urban farming, we share common goals with the bicycle advocacy movement of building community by encouraging people to get out and spending time with their neighbors. We believe that if we can help build out bicycle infrastructure and show people what is possible to accomplish by bicycle, we can induce and inspire more people to ride. As more citizens in urban areas return to an active and local lifestyle, we will see substantial quality of life improvements for everyone.

A key part of making this happen is knowledge and each of us has to attain this knowledge ourselves. We can, however, build organizations together to create opportunities for this to happen. Giving citizens an opportunity to learn together is a big part of why Alleycat Acres exists! Similarly, we're thrilled that Ada's Technical Books stepped forward to offer the use of their venue. Local book stores are cornerstones of a community where people can come together under the common goal of learning. Consequently, we are quite proud of them and their involvement in this event and their neighborhood.

So please come out on Saturday with your ideas and excitement to put them into action creating change in our city. For more information, you can check out the Bikestravaganza tour website and thefacebook event.

We're making the Tour de Fat a zero-waste event, with your help

This Saturday, New Belgium Brewing is bringing their Tour de Fat to Seattle. It's a bike carnival in Gas Works Park, with a parade around Fremont, costumes, "insane bicycle contraptions", music, and of course beer. As well as being a fun event, we love it because it promotes cycling, the day will raise money for two wonderful local nonprofits—the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and Bikeworks—and the organisers are partnering with Sustainable Seattle to make it a zero waste event. Making it zero waste involves not giving out any material that can't be reused, recycled or composted, and having volunteers at every set of bins to make sure people do recycle and compost everything they should. We need your help with that last part.

We'll have 5 compost stations, and we'd like to get two volunteers staffing each one from 11am to 5pm, ideally for two hour shifts. We'll give you a cheat sheet listing everything that goes into each bin, so you'll just have to talk to people and show them what to dispose of where. It's a great opportunity to help reduce the environmental impact of a public event and educate people about waste reduction, and you'll still have plenty of time to enjoy the event yourself.

If you are interested, please email Eldan Goldenberg with a preferred time (preferably a 2-hour block, but we're flexible), and a second choice in case everyone picks the same time. If you represent another non-profit, please let us know, and we'll be happy to give you some space to hand out flyers at the event.

UPDATE: there will be t-shirts and free beer tokens for volunteers!

Smart Growth Conference: First Day

The 9th annual Smart Growth Conference kicked off on Thursday February 4th on the sixth floor of the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle.




Kick-off Plenary

After a Dow Constantine, King County Executive, Michelle Pirzadeth, Acting Regional Administrator our region’s EPA and a few other gave speeches, Ron Sims, longtime supporter of Sustainable Seattle and currently the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Deputy Secretary was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award. A standing ovation came from the crowd. Ron Sims spoke in celebration of the synchronization of HUD, DOT and EPA and in tribute of his family and his boss, the Secretary of HUD. A second standing ovation was given. Two in one night!

This was followed by Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary, Ray LaHood, DOT Transportation and a video presentation by speeches by Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator. Ray LaHood spoke about access to jobs, quality schools and safe streets, a clean energy economy that enhances the competitiveness of our nation. He talked about what Sustainability means: choice and quality of life- walk able accessible job centers where people can walk to work; building inclusive neighborhoods of opportunities so community members share problems and opportunities, economic vitality being smaller but stronger and smarter and survival itself.

Mr. LaHood spoke to the truth that all communities define sustainability differently based on their circumstances while all seeking to meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Families are spending far too much on commutes and high rent or mortgage payments. In the last generation, transportation costs have increased by 1000%. He spoke about the Sustainability Partnership between EPA, DOT and HUD. He announced the creation of a new office focused sustainability with a $200M budget.



Regional Leadership in Smart Growth and Sustainability: Lessons from across the Country

“Smart growth” or “Sustainability” can sometimes be alarming terms. Synonyms are: Blue print Planning, Vision 2050, Quality of Life Planning….a rose is still a rose by any other name. It does not matter what you call it. Knowing the goals can allow the community to find the right terms to use is a best practice.

Do not start from square one: build on what is out there. Survey and do scenario workshops to understand what is out there, and to understand the big movements and concerns.

Identify priorities and organize them in how they work together and are interconnected: sustainability, accessibility, prosperity and livability. Set targets – stretch goals, longer and shorter-term goals. This leads to a compact or agreement that identifies and binds individuals and organizations towards working together.

Get public comment, go online, get ideas and make sure you have a way to measure how you are going to get there. Get support and be there for the long haul.

Local food independence is a challenge for regions. Farmers need to develop new and creative markets and models. We are loosing farmland, and it is harder to establish new farms. Farmers are competing for crops and moving to biofuel over food. The local economic impact is often difficult to determine (check out Viki Sonntag’s work on the local food system multiplier).

Talking about Race and Smart Growth: What are the next steps

The panelists identified needs for communities of color to get the leadership support to affect the ideas and move them forward, to link academic research to implementing research findings on the ground, and the need to talk about race in an effective manner to move people and arm people of color to create multiracial alliances to influence policy and action.

Race and ethnicity can be a major challenge and are one of the most significant barriers to collaboration. Social class and gender inequality is another major barrier. Challenges regarding integrating social justice and environmental movements and goals include the local nature of social justice groups and the global nature of the environmental movement. Another challenge is time frames. The wealthier one is, the longer the time frame. If you are struggling to meet your basic needs, your time frame is likely quite short – a rising tide lifts all boats but can’t lift you if you do not have a boat.

Yet another challenge is the language around race: this is a hard topic to discuss. We lack a common language for social justice and race, unlike with environmentalism. Moreover, with only 2% of our brains dedicated to cognitive processes, we tend to use the other 98% - a more reactive process-when dealing with social justice. Communication strategies: think about the cognitive framing- we need to be careful that we do not reinforce assumptions deep in our brain (that 98%) in how and what is messaged. We need to resent the framing – our mindsets and our values. Community needs to be valued at least as much as economics. We need to include all in the process of setting strategies or agendas wherever we are in that process.

Tools for going forward

Professor John Powell, ED of Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: Tool for Talking about Race

Integrate Social Justice into your strategy

Portland underwent a process to form relationships across race and social class in the city that directly addressed power dynamics and privilege and how that shows up in a daily basis and found ways for people of privilege to be better allies.

Meet people, organizations and institutions “where they are” provide next steps.

Go to communities of color, communities that are under served – listen. Even if you don’t have an answer, a solution or the resources to work together. Building relationships can be a first step to getting to the end goal of social justice and sustainability.

Newest Research on Built Environment and Health


The amount of research in the field of health and environment is steadily increasing as evidence grows with the relationship between health and the buildings and communities in which we live. The Active Living Research organization is leading the way with a sponsorship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Physical inactivity is the leading cause of death in the United States. The data shows the number one cause of death is heart failure which is caused in the majority of cases because of an inactive lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Tobacco use is another major cause of death that is in congruent with an active lifestyle since tobacco use lowers one's lung capacity decreasing the efficiency during physical activities.

The panelists shared some of their research and their results including the walkability of neighborhoods, childhood obesity, adult bicycling behavior, and the overall effect of transportation on the health of the populace.

Childhood obesity rates are the highest they have ever been in the country's history. The major factor is environment as that is the only major source of change that is broad enough and large enough to account for most of the nearly tripling amount of childhood obesity cases since the late sixties.

Children over the age of five are not meeting their bare minimum levels of activities, nearly 85% are getting less than the recommended amounts. The built environment has lead many parents to simply not allow their children outside as crowded streets, unwalkable paths, and the threat of crime have made the choices for activity restricted to indoor pursuits. With a focus on built environment the city has an opportunity to reverse that trend by building playable parks within ten minute walks of major residential areas, rebuilding and updating crosswalks and bike paths, and building safety features such as working street lights.

Public transportation included light rail and buses and a significant early finding of the research shows that the public is more likely to walk further for the use of light rail than buses. In fact, the public would walk twice as far if they could use light rail as opposed to buses.

The research is still in its early stages, but looks to bring concrete evidence to influence policy makers to rethink neighborhoods, transportation and the health of its citizens.