News & commentary on sustainability, activism, urban planning, politics, and our world.
Last week, I featured a great project by the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR), the Sacramento Railyard renovation and revitalization project. CCLR is focused on reusing or recycling brownfields, lands dirtied with industrial contamination that just need a bit of effort to get in use again. This is popular, exciting work amongst city planners — it’s like turning an old, beat-up car into a beauty again.
When we speak of “growing” a more sustainable local economy, the term is usually not meant literally; but in the case of an innovative design for a new transport vehicle, we may actually be able to grow our way into a more sustainable future. A beautiful new three-wheeled recumbent bicycle has been created that is constructed from renewable organic materials. The bamboo bike was derived from techniques used in arborsculpture, a more complex form of topiary, which utilizes specifically modified and grafted plants to create shaped structures which are very strong. The process is also known as “grown mobility”.
Although this important issue got a bit lost last month, Ireland’s Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, has just called the Catholic Church out on their long history of criminal and sexual abuse. The recent release of the devastating “Cloyne Report”, which detailed even more cases of sexual attacks by priests as recently as three years ago, has driven the country’s Prime Minister to harshly rebuke the Vatican for their heinous crimes and repeated obfuscation related to the massive ongoing child sexual abuse scandals.
With my professional training in city planning, I have to admit that I get giddy over cool smart growth projects. I recently ran across one such project, a super cool one, and one of the key organizations behind it. The project is the redevelopment of Sacramento’s downtown railyard, which apparently employed 10,000 employees at the height of its use and was the largest single workforce in Central Valley for 8 decades. One of the key organizations behind it is the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR).
This week in the state of Washington the tribal council for the Suquamish people voted unanimously to approve marriage equality for all members of their tribe. Tribal member Heather Purser had been pushing for the change for several years, and Monday the council all agreed to adopt the new law. The ordinance now allows the tribal court to issue a marriage license to two unmarried people, “regardless of their sex,” if they are both adults, and at least one of the individuals is a member of the Suquamish Tribe.
