The Week-in-Preview: It’s Your World, I’m Just Living On It Edition

Posted on | May 16, 2007 | No Comments

Urban Sustainability Forum -  New Urbanism: How Everything Old is New (and Better) Again
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Phila., Pa.
Thursday, May 17, 6:30-8:30 pm, FREE 

This is a Town Square  event at the Academy of Natural Sciences, so off the bat it is probably worth attending.  I am a big fan of the New Urbanism movement, although I get turned off when New Urbanist planners demand rigid adherence to the Design over practicality. (If it is about creating usable, livable, lovable spaces, some things just have to be allowed to design themselves, organically, right?)  Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere was great, so was Kunstler (before he got all apocalyptic).

Anyway, precious little information from the Academy about the topic and speakers, but just assume it is a primer on New Urbanism.

How is this science, you might ask? How is it not? Themes will include energy use, sustainability, natural resources, sociology and transportation.

John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry | This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future
Free Library of Philadelphia: Central Branch
1901 Vine Street, Phila., Pa.
Monday, June 4, 2007 at 7:00PM, FREE

To be unfair: this is the second play he’s stolen from Al Gore, the first being losing to George W. Bush.

In This Moment on Earth these two leading environmental activists introduce Americans who are leading the green revolution.

Not that I don’t appreciate their work on behalf of the environment, but when did they become two leading environmental activists? Still, to stifle my inner cynic, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Supposedly, it won’t be about Horseface and the Black Widow and it will instead be about other Americans who are leading the green revolution.  Speaking of whom, when might someone like Bruce Sterling be coming to town to speak of the environment?

Probably worth reserving a seat if you are intersted.

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