A.M. Greenlist: New urban green ideas

>> "Accidentally" take more car lanes out of service. Eric Richardson of blogdowntown notes that traffic gets around fine on 6th St., despite the fact that a lane has been taken up by a transformer for several weeks. "If the city's content to let the lane sit blocked for weeks at a time, one has to question whether it's really so necessary for traffic after all."

>> Ditch the bottled water habit already. Colin Beavin, No Impact Man, talks about Elizabeth Royte's "Bottlemania," a soon to be published book about our drinking water. Writes Royte: "I come away from my investigations with at least one certainty: not all tap water is perfect. But it is the devil we know, the devil we have standing to negotiate with and improve. Bottled water companies don't answer to the public, they answer to shareholders." Earlier: Bottle up.

>> Make an ambitious urban bicycle plan a reality. New York city plans to "make it possible for riders to traverse Manhattan via dedicated bike lanes and circumnavigate the island along the waterfront. Sheltered bicycle parking and thousands of new public bike racks are already in place." L.A.'s a little behind.

>> Try NOT eating corn -- corn-based additives, that is. In Whole Life Times, Katherine Pryor keeps a journal of her three days off corn, a diet "which pretty much excludes all the mysterious multisyllabic ingredients on the back of most processed foods. It also excludes all those “acids”: ascorbic, citric, lactic, malic or otherwise."

>> Grow and buy basil from the block. "More and more New Yorkers ... are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block." If urban farmers can make a go of it in that crowded city, we can surely do it here in L.A. (h/t to reader Mercy)

Photo by Eric Richardson, blogdowntown.com

Comments

[mercybell]

think about your morning jog how much fruit dangles off the trees in southern california, whenever I come home from the east coast i go nuts (and a bit of a kleptomaniac when regarding figs and avocadosi must admit). i live near boston now and my azorean portuguese neighbors make wine from grapes that grow in their backyard and supply a lot of their daily meals with their own tiny gardens. we have a lot to learn...

[m]

Last time I suggested an empty lot should be turned into space to grow food here in LA, I was laughed at and told it was nothing more than a lawsuit waiting to happen....

[Cassandra]

Interesting observation on the lanes...which reflects the "if you build it, traffic will jam" effect which you can view any day of the week on the 405, 101, 110, etc. Do more lanes really mean less traffic? What about the cost of blocking lanes/interrupting traffic in order to construct those lanes. I wonder what kind of cost/benefit analysis has been done on adding lanes to freeways, especially in regards to the types of lanes added (ie: I am biased toward carpool lanes, bike lanes, and bus only lanes). I'll have to look into this...