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Friday, September 19, 2008 is National Park(ing) Day. Inspired by the project implemented in San Francisco a few years ago by the artistic collective, Rebar, communities throughout North America and the United Kingdom are going to temporarily reappropriate public space currently used for automobile parking by erecting temporary parks.

The motivation is simple–too much of our public space in the US is singularly dedicated to harboring cars.  Here’s a back of the envelope calculation:  according to the City of Chicago [.pdf], there are 3,800 miles of streets in the city.  A standard width for an on-street parking space is about 9 feet.  Assuming parking on both sides of the street, the city has approximately 8290 acres of on-street parking.  If this were park space it would exceed the current park space in the city by 13%!

On National Park(ing) Day, people put grass, benches, and trees in parking spaces, providing another understanding for what parking might mean in the city.

In Chicago, the national cosponsor of National Park(ing) Day, the Trust for Public Land, will be transforming parking spaces on the 1800 block of N. Milwaukee Avenue into parks.  Please join them in this effort to reclaim public spaces in the city!

photo courtesy of Rebar

Much to my surprise, Charlie Gibson of ABC news, in his interview with John McCain’s vice presidential candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, pressed the candidate on the issue of climate change.  McCain has expressed some concern about climate change in the past and at one point sponsored a cap-and-trade bill.  Palin, on the other hand, has denied the anthropogenic factors influencing climate change, placing her radically out of step with McCain, her own party, and scientific consensus.

In the interview with Gibson, however, she appears to (maybe) have changed her tune.  Here is the relevant section of the transcript:

Sarah Palin on Climate Change:

GIBSON: Let me talk a little bit about environmental policy, because this interfaces with energy policy and you have some significant differences with John McCain. Do you still believe that global warming is not man-made?

PALIN: I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change. Here in Alaska, the only arctic state in our union, of course, we see the effects of climate change more so than any other area with ice pack melting. Regardless, though, of the reason for climate change, whether it’s entirely, wholly caused by man’s activities or is part of the cyclical nature of our planet — the warming and the cooling trends — regardless of that, John McCain and I agree that we gotta do something about it and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution.

GIBSON: But it’s a critical point as to whether or not this is man-made. He says it is. You have said in the past it’s not.

PALIN: The debate on that even, really has evolved into, OK, here’s where we are now: scientists do show us that there are changes in climate. Things are getting warmer. Now what do we do about it. And John McCain and I are gonna be working on what we do about it.

GIBSON: Yes, but isn’t it critical as to whether or not it’s man-made, because what you do about it depends on whether its man-made.

PALIN: That is why I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.

GIBSON: But I, color me a cynic, but I hear a little bit of change in your policy there. When you say, yes, now you’re beginning to say it is man-made. It sounds to me like you’re adapting your position to Sen. McCain’s.

PALIN: I think you are a cynic because show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any affect, or no affect, on climate change.

On the surface she seems to have shifted her position: “I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming.”  When pressed by Gibson on her weasel words, she asserts: “I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.”

Her deployment of a rhetoric of uncertainty makes it seem like she is on board with science, without repudiating her previous claims.  One would think that a politician from a circumpolar region would have more command of the science and policy of climate change, but she gives little confidence that this is the case.

US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is appealing to Congress for funds to replenish the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund. The fund gets its revenues from a 18.4 cent per gallon tax levied on petrol purchases and is the major conduit for federal money going to state and local highway and transit projects.

Because of high fuel prices, gasoline consumption has declined over the past year resulting in revenue shortfalls for the fund. Because the tax is a fixed, higher pump prices do not necessarily mean higher revenues. Furthermore, when consumers purchase fuel-efficient vehicles they pay less taxes per mile driven yet still require well-maintained and expanded highways.

This financial situation suggests larger structural imbalances in the financing system for roads and highways. When gas prices were relatively low, enough revenue was generated to meet costs; but when prices got high enough to impact demand, the system shows its faults.

Peters’ running to Congress for money to fill the gap should remind us of what could have happened had John McCain’s insane idea to create a “gas-tax holiday” generated more steam.  The budget shortcomings could have been even more severe and with more consumption, the urgency of highway maintenance and expansion would have been more pronounced.

With his elevation of a climate change denier to be his potential Vice President and his embrace of crackpot schemes to weaken the country’s transportation infrastructure, McCain is doing little to suggest he is serious about confronting some of the country’s pressing policy challenges.

I have published several papers on planned communities and have a long-standing interest in looking at the tensions between the visions of planners and the ways in which everyday people relate to the economic, social, and cultural elements of these planned spaces.

Often planned communities are derided for their social and cultural “inauthenticity” and their contribution to ecologically unsustainable sprawl.  Some planners, however, have been trying to address these issues and build in a more environmentally-friendly fashion.  Prairie Crossing, in Grayslake, Illinois is an interesting attempt in this regard.  Terrain.org did a good story a few years back about its origins, but, briefly, the community was developed self-consciously to respect natural ecosystems.  Any develompent of this size will undoubtedly come up short in solving all of the environmental problems associated with the intractable problems of suburbanization, but in a 677-acre site, the developers did an admirable job.

I visited there a few days ago and, in an effort to continue some experiments I’ve been doing with google maps, I will post below a modest “virtual interactive tour.”  Clicking on the blue points will bring up pictures and commentary.  The map can be linked to directly on google’s website.