Check out this promotional video I saw today on YouTube showing off a prototype of the PUMA, which stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, a joint venture between GM and Segway. Apparently, the small car runs on a lithium-ion battery and can drive 35 miles per charge. I read on FT.com that GM made a statement saying the small car,
“..could change the way we move about in cities. Not everybody in the world will be driving these things, but it certainly has applicability for cities, college campuses, and things of that ilk.” FT.com
This video certainly gave me some things to think about. As many of you know I am a big supporter of carsharing as a way of reducing vehicle ownership, use, and parking space. These little vehicles have the potential of bridging the gap between traditional transit services and home or work, the last (or first) leg of most journeys, which has historically been the portion that keeps many from using transit. I can envision many applications of it, including surburban settings.
“Six months from now,” [Vice-President] Biden said, “if the verdict on this effort is that we’ve wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we’ve done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”
Unfortunately, the stimulus funds that are being distributed for infrastructure are not all being spent on high-speed rail and state-of-the-art projects. Many of those dollars are being wasted on highway expansions, extensions, and “enhancements” that may create jobs, but do nothing to solve our serious infrastructure problems. In order to put people to work, the government has stipulated that the funds must be spent quickly and in many cases that translates into the funds being spent carelessly because the plans for ill-conceived projects, which were originally created years ago, are ready to go.
This article, Highways to Nowhere: The 7 Most Ridiculous Roads Being Built in America, by Yonah Freemark, posted on the website, The Infrastructurist: America Under Construction, highlights a few of the worst projects that your tax dollars are likely to be sunk into and then promptly paved over.
I found this interview of Julia Christensen, Oberlin College professor and artist, on the The Infrastructurist about her book, Big Box Reuse. In it she describes communities around the country that have found productive ways of reusing abandoned big box stores that would have sat vacant while they rot away, pollute as they fall apart, and collect rats and other undesirable things.
If you like that, I also came across this article on the Sustainable Industries website after recently having some lengthy discussions with friends about what to do with abandoned malls and big box stores. This article sums up the issue very nicely and provides a broad definition of a “lifestyle center” (basically a new term for a very, very old concept).
Only three enclosed shopping malls have been built in the United States since 2005; none were built in 2008 and only one is planned to open in 2009. A driving force in the decline of the American shopping mall as we know it is a realization that the model is not sustainable, either economically or environmentally. Centralized shopping is not about to disappear from the American landscape, however.
Malls built over the last few decades are being refurbished into so-called lifestyle centers, a term created by developers to describe what may be the world’s oldest location for retail commerce: an urban mixed-use community.
…..
“These projects are hybrids with urban streetscapes but suburban parking ratios,” [Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,”] says. “They’re much more sustainable than what they displace, but not as much as an urban environment.”