Too Tired for Much More

Sorry, I can't post much tonight. (It's supposed to be time for a January Twitter round-up, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.) I had to attend a city of St. Paul public-input zoom session about changing our zoning to increase housing options and I've run out of time and energy. 

During the small group breakouts at the session, I had to listen to multiple white women explain that they were "environmentalists," which to them means we need to preserve single-family housing in the middle of a city so they can keep their grass yards (and trees), because otherwise the urban heat island will become worse and that would be bad for the environment. Oh yes, and children need to be able to play in their own individual front yard, even though we have the largest park system in the country.

I am not a good person to have at a session like this because I can't remain calm and measured in explaining that the most "environmental" thing we can do is create a more dense city and house more people near transit and services. They kept saying the idea of building more housing would "pave over" everything. Seriously.

I pointed out that we are not paving things, we want to build housing for people. Not house cars, which requires pavement. I did manage to throw in that the density of Brooklyn is what we're looking for, which has plenty of trees.

Here's a quote from Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian I just saw on Twitter that fits with the moment:

In 5 years, Barcelona has doubled the city's network of bike lanes from 120km to 241 km and eliminated 3.5k parking spaces. It made the entire city a low-emissions zone and created car-free areas around schools. 

I wonder if these women would recognize that as an environmental city, or would they think Barcelona's superblocks are too dense and not child-friendly enough?