I just watched the 2007 TED Talk from Jaime Lerner. He’s an architect and city planner from Curitiba, Brazil, often looked upon as the most progressively planned city in the world.
I love how Jaime Lerner starts with,
“City is not a problem, it’s a solution.”
One of my growing frustrations since I came back from France, is the dependence I have on our cars. Even in North Minneapolis, which is an urban area, the reality of using our public transit to get anywhere is largely hopeless. It takes forever. One of the problems as Jaime pointed out is the lack of mixed use space in our city and the relative lack of opportunity to Live and Work in the same neighborhood.
My wife and I are fortunate. We live on the northside and we both work on the northside. Unfortunately, our childcare is rarely on the northside. This means, we have to drive to make life efficient. It sucks.
Economic, social and environmental justice are all interconnected. But it seems like with intentional design, fast action and planning based not on what I want, but based on what we need will make all the difference.
If we think about how bringing jobs to a community, hiring within a community and making the jobs accessible from the community can impact the economic, social and environmental justice of a community, then we would just do it. Because it seems like the right thing to do. Because God wants us to think about the interconnected web we all live in. And about each other. And because justice is the business of the church.
I want to live & work without making a huge dent in the ozone over New Zealand. Don’t you? The church needs people who are thinking about this stuff. And there are people thinking about these things for sure, but it seems like the voice isn’t loud enough. I had to go to another country figure these things out for myself….how are other people hearing the message…
I’m trying hard to keep this from being a rant…it’s not working. Now I’ll quit.
Posted in green, rants | 1 Comment
Maybe there are small steps we can talk about taking to make ourselves less dependent on cars.
Public transit does take longer, but not all that much longer if we plan ahead a little.