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Seoul turns to bicycles to combat global warming
AFP
AFPThe Seoul city government has announced plans to build 207 kilometres (129 miles) of cycle paths over the next four years extending to all corners of the South Korean capital, according to officials.

The 120-billion-won (88-million-dollar) plan is based on a "road diet" programme, under which the number of lanes for passenger vehicles in major roads will be cut to create new cycle paths.

It calls for the construction of 17 main cycle paths totaling 200 kilometres that criss-cross the sprawling city and one downtown seven-kilometre beltway.

"Any urban areas where commuters only rely on vehicles burning fuel cannot avoid blame for global warming and traffic congestion," Seoul City Mayor Oh Se-Hoon said on Wednesday, on the city government's website.

"We will make sure that bicycles will compete with vehicles for commuting in Seoul," said Oh, who rides his bicycle to work every day.
(22 October 2008)

With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus
Katie Zezima, New York Times
BIDDEFORD, Me. — When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle.

“I was like, ‘A free bike, no catch?’ ” Ms. Galliani, 17, a freshman from Fort Bragg, Calif., asked. “It’s really an ideal way to get around the campus.”

University administrators and students nationwide are increasingly feeling that way too.

The University of New England and Ripon College in Wisconsin are giving free bikes to freshmen who promise to leave their cars at home. Other colleges are setting up free bike sharing or rental programs, and some universities are partnering with bike shops to offer discounts on purchases.

The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus...
(19 October 2008)

Kunstler: The end of suburban life is coming
Blake Aued, Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia)
Americans had better get used to the idea that, one day, they'll live more like their great, great-grandparents than their parents.

A powerful combination of depleted oil fields, climate change, population growth and financial crisis soon will conspire to change the American lifestyle drastically, according to best-selling writer James Howard Kunstler.

And any hope offered by the recent dip in oil and gas prices is false hope, Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes," said in a lecture Tuesday in the University of Georgia Chapel.

"Because the price of oil has gone down in recent weeks, the American public is once again going to get the false idea that we don't have a problem," he said. "We do have a problem, and it's a big problem."

Kunstler predicts that in the coming years Americans will be forced to give up cars, tractors and airplanes in favor of trains and pack animals, trade in Wal-Mart for backyard gardens and abandon their high-rise condos and suburban McMansions for small towns and family farms.

... In the future, small cities like Athens, with access to water and nearby arable land, will fare best, Kunstler said. Such cities should discourage more sprawl and plan around New Urbanist principles like mixed use and walkable neighborhoods, he said.

"Emulate the best of your pre-automobile stuff and then change your codes so it's legal to build it again," he said.
(22 October 2008)