Here's your chance not just to be the mayor, but the original city planner as well! Imagine a medium sized city that would be developed with modern, low carbon transportation in mind, and other strategies to reduce the average citizens' carbon footprints.
What would that city look like? Would that make you more likely to want to live there?
Sustainable City >
Clean Transportation
As many of the posters in this forum have noticed, transportation needs to be the primary focus in reducing carbon emissions in every city. At http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/ca … l-warming, you can see a report on the effects of driving, flying, and other methods of getting around in the United States especially. The U.S. produces more carbon from transportation alone than other countries produce in all sectors combined. If I were able to create a new city, I would first ensure that sound public transportation systems navigate the entire city. Some of the world's most polluted cities(Los Angeles) have high carbon emissions in part due to ineffective public transportation. In addition, people need to be motivated to drive efficient cars. I think more highways and streets need to include lanes for fuel efficient vehicles only. This would give people the motivation they lack to purchase these vehicles. This system, combined with bike paths accompanying nearly every road, would help eliminate the majority or transportation emissions.
Nick, I completely agree with you. The United States is leading in carbon emissions, and as a country we must act upon this issue. Being that transportation is a big factor to do with the carbon emissions, we must focus heavily on this criteria. I liked your idea for street lanes for efficient cars only. Another addition to this would be creating buses and other means of public transportation that would run cleanly and not hurt the environment. There needs to be more of a switch to electric cars, although they have been recently created, this would heavily reduce the emissions of cars. Lastly, I would add to the fact that neighborhoods should all have a set of stores that they must incorporate within their neighborhood, so that people can easily access the stores by bicycle or by simply walking. For example, within my neighborhood the nearest store is 10 minutes by car. That leaves me no other option but to drive there. Instead by implementing an easier accessible shopping center in each neighborhood, people would have less of a need to drive so much.