Planning for Something Better

There is so much information out there that is often difficult to keep track of it and assemble it into something meaningful.  Today was not like that as it all came in at the same time.

A post on Grist.org titled Sick of the suburbs: How badly designed communities trash our health is about exactly what you think it would be about. The trouble is that most suburbs, and cities, are badly designed if health is a guiding principle.  You might get a park, certainly a sidewalk or two, but in most cases it is for cars, trucks,  business and industry.  Food and water are things that come from somewhere else and are trucked and piped.  So more business, industry and vehicles are needed to make anywhere livable once everything that was there is paved over.

Then there was the release of the Alliance for Biking & Walking 2012 Benchmarking Report on of all things, biking and walking.  It does not tell us how to go forward as much as telling  us where we are.  We do need to define the problem and know where we are so that we can plan for something better.

Finally there was the article at GOVERNING.com titled Utah Envisions a Sustainable Future about the public-private partnership called Envision Utah.  They started planning 15 years ago when they realized that growth was going to happen and that growth in the normal manner has not healthy.  To quote the article, "Today, Envision Utah is a national model for cities grappling with how to ease congestion, stop sprawl and clean the air..."  

We may not be able to get the last 15 years back but there is certainly a lot of good information to build on and to begin planning for something better in the next 15 years.