Humanize the Earth!

Invitation to Dec 1-4 event in Washington State

Emerging Futures Network - Doing together what we cannot do alone.
Building An Evolving Infrastructure: Connecting Networks for Action
By ted

Blaine, Washington — Dec 1-4, 2006

This is an invitation. Please join us! If you are engaged in making the world a better place via championing your own initiative or supporting others, jump in with a group of like-minded partners to develop something bigger than any one of us. Join us as we uplift our interconnecting visions and weave together projects for a better world, one that we cannot initiate alone. Come explore and cultivate our collective potential and forge new alliances.

Neighbors Project

Via west north is the Neighbors Project here in Chicago. An excerpt from their Neighbor’s Manifesto:

I call on the urban generation to fearlessly pursue our passions and principles in order to inspire and engage the rest of the country to come out of isolation and rejoin the local and national conversations. This manifesto is the embodiment of my hope in a cultural evolution towards an urban future.

I’ve been expressing for a while now that I think the future of humanity is in the cities.  I have some close friends that espouse a kind of “back to the land” philosophy that seems to take them to rural, or semi-rural places.  While I do see that we need to have a more intimate connection with the natural world (hence my involvement with the Chicago Conservation Corps), that natural world, including food production, is also right here in the city.  It’s close-by and doesn’t require burning fossil fuels to get to it.

Amtrak tickets on sale for new service across Illinois

Great news in Illinois about passenger rail. The State has doubled it’s financial committment to rail in the State which has resulted in a huge expansion of passenger service. From Midwest High Speed Rail Association:

… Tickets have gone on sale for the new Amtrak Illinois “Lincoln Service” trains on the Chicago –
Springfield – St. Louis corridor. Similar announcements have been made for new service on the Carbondale and Quincy lines.

Chicago Complete Streets

Yay! Chicagoland Bicycle Federation:

The city of Chicago today released a landmark Complete Streets Policy that for the first time mandates that all users must be accommodated in all transportation projects.