By Carter Lavin on January 12th, 2009
From Madrid to Salamanca
The trip has been pretty uneventful, nothing too eco/energy related to remark on except the usual thing about how trains are amazing ways to get around. But I did notice this as an East Coaster. The amount of sprawl here is next to nothing. The only time you see buildings are when you come across a town. The rest of the way is grass, hills, rocks and trees…I want to say that it’s an open canopy savannah. Part of the density may be caused by the seemingly inhospitable terrain in western Spain but a big part is that these cities were build before the car so they are built on a human scale (unlike some American cities I could name). Living on a human scale is vital to a sustainable future because a city if a city’s lifeblood is cars, its pulse will stop after Peak Oil.
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By Carter Lavin on January 7th, 2009
Where you live determines many things about who you are. Whether it is your quality of education, cultural awareness or general health, it’s all about location location location. Being green is no exception. Currently I am visiting Madrid, and I keep wondering to myself “how easy it for the citizens to be green?” It is Southern Europe after all so we know they use less gas, electricity and water than we do in the US, which is mainly caused by much higher prices of those commodities here and that the region has serious issues with droughts in the summer. But the whole story is not explained by price. After all, I am a tourist who doesn’t pay any utilities here, but I am still being green(er) than usual because of the Madrid infrastructure.
First off, Madrid actually has a city-wide recycling system unlike Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC (all places I’ve called home at one point or another). There are giant recycling bins dotted throughout the city, clearly labeled so even a foreigner like myself whose Spanish is not the best, can understand. I have seen them in every stage of varying stages of overflowing to nearly empty, but the key thing is that they are being used and used correctly. I’m not sure what the residential recycling system is yet, what kind of things they take or even if there is one, but it’s only my second night here.
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