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Alex Steffen Profile picture
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23 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Very little American urban progressives advocate for will matter if U.S. cities don't build millions and millions of new homes in compact communities over the next decade.

Our worst problems aren't solvable without rapidly-built abundant housing and reductions in autodependence.
This is before we even discuss climate brittleness, risk-driven relocations and climate refugees...

Most of the biggest barriers to rapid progress on inclusive and sustainable urbanism are purely political. They could be changed overnight, if we had the will.

Every city has the capacity to welcome (/allow to remain) many more residents...

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More from @AlexSteffen

Alex Steffen Profile picture
24 Dec
Being someone who thinks about the future for a living, it's become a little tradition of mine, at the close of the year, to offer some thoughts about what's coming.

In that spirit:

2021 was the last year of the Twentieth Century.

We're not ready for what comes next.

(Thread)
The dividing line is continuity—the belief that things will be more or less like they are now for years to come.

That out assumptions, cultural beliefs, personal experience, professional expertise, etc. will remain valid for the foreseeable future.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet…
Popular thinking of the last century centered on the idea that history was an arc, a continuous curve from the Enlightenment to a future in which humanity would have chosen to create a more rational society for the betterment of all.

Of we'd blow it all up.
Read 7 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
20 Dec
Nothing is external to the planetary crisis.

Everything we eat and drink, buy and use, every object and every service we depend on—even those objects and services we so take for granted that we call them "the landscape" and "nature"—is now immersed in rapid ecological upheaval.
It's amazing to me how (comparatively) little it'd take, even now, to avoid truly ruinous coming decades— how materially better off we'd be— if we acted at scale and with speed.

Bold climate action/preparation will never be this cheap (in true and total costs) again.
We're going to end up acting — at bigger scales, with greater speed.

It's just going to cost us not only the price of change, but the (by then many times greater) costs of inaction.
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
20 Dec
Ecological illiteracy shows in the belief that the planetary crisis can be broken down to its parts, prioritized, solved sequentially or ignored altogether until people reverse it later. ...the belief that ecological imperatives will mold themselves to our desire for continuity.
The consequence of ecological illiteracy is to find ourselves incapable of seeing the discontinuity that's here, all around us, and unable to form perspectives and plans that offer tools for successful action as change accelerates.
The deepest damage of ecological illiteracy is to understand climate/environmental impacts as being limited to "the environment" somewhere out there, and not ripping through every certainty in every human system everywhere in the world, including your own life.
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
18 Dec
It's not quite the Winter Solstice, but I want to repeat my annual suggestion that if you have some extra in your life right now, please you send a few bucks to your local food bank.

There are few more direct connections between your kindness and help for a person in hard times.
You can literally Google "local food bank" to find one close to you.

No need to comparison shop. In my experience, any small group trying to feed the hungry in their own community is likely worthy enough of your trust for a small donation.
If you're not connected to a specific place right now, but still want to offer some help, I give to this Seattle project, and have never regretted it.

I'm sure they could use a few more contributions.

@RainierValleyFB

rvfb.org
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
18 Dec
Every three weeks or so I get The Fear about breadbasket collapse in a transapocalyptic world.

On schedule:

"[T]hese results suggest that major breadbasket regions will face distinct anthropogenic climatic risks sooner than previously anticipated."

nature.com/articles/s4301… Image
More
Transapocalyptic realities:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-transapo…
Read 6 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
14 Dec
New Zealand mandates acceptance of three-story, three-unit townhouses on most lots in its major cities, with six stories around urban transit centers, and no parking requirements.

PwC estimates 105,000 new dwellings in next 8 years.

ht @ewschaetzle
stuff.co.nz/national/polit…
Rapid urbanism is needed almost everywhere, but especially in NZ, which has Bay-Area-level property craziness.

"New Zealand experienced the third-highest property price increase in the world in the past year according to statistics compiled by the IMF..."
stuff.co.nz/business/12716…
Rapid urbanism is the key to deep climate emissions reductions, the smartest means for providing housing justice, and economically critical in regions trying to ruggedize against climate impacts.

It's also eminently achievable, now, almost anywhere.

Read 4 tweets

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