For the many YPP readers interested in planning and sustainability issues and urban development: Alex Steffen at WorldChanging has a terrific essay on city redevelopment titled "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." It's fairly long for a blog post, but well worth reading, as it summarizes a lot of the current thinking about green tech, density planning, and cities over the past couple of years. (See also David Owen's "Green Manhattan [PDF]," etc.)

A brief summary of Steffen:

1) Since most of the energy consumed and CO2 produced happens in the home, we should focus on how people live and work rather than (solely) the gas efficiency of the car they use to get there.

2) We need to act fast, not just because our lifestyles are out of control, but that the rest of the world emulates us.

3) This doesn't mean cars aren't important, just that tailpipes and MPG matters less than the enviro (and social!) costs of roads and infrastructure, commuting, etc.

4) If we want to turn this around, we have to promote and build denser housing developments and leverage existing high-density neighborhoods (i.e. cities and inner-ring suburbs.

5) We can do this faster and achieve higher energy gains than we can turn around the existing automotive fleet.

6) Goodies! Bike shares, transit-oriented development, New Urbanist neighborhoods. A green-city-geek's geekstuff.

Over the past 18 months RecycleNOW Philadelphia has been hard at work collecting over 12,000 signatures, lobbying for public hearings, and making sure our next mayor will implement a dependable weekly curbside recycling program for everyone in the city. Now we need your help...

Come out for an afternoon of Philly's best local bands playing to support the future of recycling in Philadelphia!

Rock & RecycleNOW
Saturday, September 29, 2007
3pm to 7pm
Whole Foods Roof
10th and South Streets

Featuring Live Performances by:
• The Capitol Years
• The Swimmers
• The Adam Monaco Band
• Adam and Dave's Bloodline
• Sarsaparilla
• Tough Guys Take Over

Tickets are $15 and available at www.cleanair.org

Win great prizes from PhillyCarShare, Sun and Earth, Starbucks, The Philadelphia Eagles and more...

For more info contact Katie Edwards at kedwards@cleanair.org or 215.567.4004 ext. 107

This is not going to save the world, but it is a small step that we should all applaud:

On Thursday, DiCicco and Kenney will introduce a bill that would ban regular plastic bags at supermarkets and pharmacies in favor of recyclable paper bags or new compostable plastic bags. And Kenney plans to introduce a companion bill that would ban polystyrene foam, commonly known as Styrofoam.

DiCicco said his legislation is modeled on a similar effort earlier this year in San Francisco.

"You walk into the store and buy a tube of toothpaste. It's in a box and they grab plastic bags and put it in them," DiCicco said. "There's no control on the number of bags they give you. The clerks don't pay attention to it. We're in a throwaway society for the last 40 years, and that's one of our problems. Packaging has gotten out of hand."

When I was in Germany last month, basically sequestered away, one of the only things to do was to walk over to the WalMart like supermarket (high entertainment!). I would peruse all the beer I couldn't drink, the chocolate I couldn't eat, and then settle on some delicious diet coke, go to pay, and despite my hands being full, I would rarely get a shopping bag from the checkout person. I could never figure out, nor ask, why the ladies couldn't just give me an effin bag. Then, finally, I realized that they were keeping them behind the counter because they charged you for each bag that you used.

It made sense- even if they were not costing out every externality- the store(s) were helping people remember that there are a lot of costs to using disposable bags. As Diccicco said, we are a throwaway society, and in a time of the coming global warming crisis, this is a small and smart step we can take to do out part in Philly.

Now, if we could only recycle....