What Might Cities Look Like in a World Without Oil?

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we’re stepping back and taking a look at the big picture. Over at network member Worldchanging, Sarah Kuck writes about the ideas of environmental scientist and sustainability activist Peter Newman. Newman gave a talk in Seattle the other night promoting his forthcoming book, Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change:

Hope for the future: A river in Seoul, South Korea, that was covered over by a freeway in the 1970s and restored in 2005. Photo by StephaneR via Flickr.

Picturing a future where we do nothing resulted in some frightening scenarios: ones where we are barely getting by and injustice is running rampant. But, as Newman explained, picturing a future in which we respond to the challenge by building resilient cities results in images of a flexible and supportive, flourishing society.

In order to build the new resilient city of the future, Newman said that “we need to stop building extra urban road capacity and urban scatter; we need to start building electric renewable cities with much greater localism in the economy and infrastructure.”

Newman will be speaking at NYU on Jan. 26th.

Also: The Bus Bench on buses gone wild in LA, no love for a tunnel from Seattle Transit Blog, and 51 bright ideas for the new president from The Sustainable Cities Blog.

Another hot network item over the last couple of days has been the
“make your own laser bike lane” device. It was featured, among many
other places, on Greater Greater Washington. Click through and see what you think.