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About Great City
We are environmentalists, neighborhood leaders, business people, and citizens working together to enhance our quality of life, help preserve our region’s natural beauty, and make Seattle a model of economic and environmental sustainability.
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Archives
Mar
31
Join Us for “Drive To Work Day”, April 1
Filed Under Bicycling, Community, Fun stuff to do | 12 Comments
Cascade Bicycle Club, a leader in creating more livable communities through bicycle education, advocacy, events and commuting and riding programs, announces that Wednesday, April 1, 2009 is “Jurassic Petroleum” Drive to Work Day.
Cascade Bicycle Club invites regular non-drivers to join millions of car commuters for “Jurassic Petroleum” Drive to Work Day. While almost two thirds of Americans drive, 37 percent are pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and can’t or don’t get behind the wheel each day.
In the state of Washington, over two million people do not participate in the act of driving an automobile. Alarmingly, this number may be increasing. The INRIX National Traffic Scorecard showed a three percent decline in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2008 from 2007. This resulted in a reduction of road congestion by 30 percent, meaning that our citizens spend much less time in their vehicles. Increases in the number of people who walk, bicycle and ride transit are contributing to a decline in driving that, if continued, would one day make cars scarce on our roads. Our citizens, as well, may shrink in size and become gradually healthier. Something must be done to curb excessive fitness, as increased life expectancies would further tax our broken Social Security system.
Cascade Bicycle Club would like to ask Americans to renew their commitment to driving by leaving their bus passes or bicycles at home. If the cost of parking or gas is a burden, employees may request that their employers help offset those costs by participating in Jurassic Petroleum’s Drive to Work Day.
For media inquiries or more information, click here.
Mar
30
Great City is Hiring
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Great City (formerly Seattle Great City Initiative) is hiring a new Executive Director. As you may have heard, Michael McGinn, Great City’s founding ED, has decided to run for Mayor this year. We wish him well, but the work of Great City must go on.
About Great City
Great City’s mission is to bring together all members of the community — conservationists, neighborhood advocates, and business people — to listen and learn about obstacles and opportunities, and above all, work to implement pragmatic solutions to realize our common vision. Our effectiveness hinges on our ability to engage diverse communities, and to transcend political and social barriers in order to achieve a common cause.
Great City recently fledged from under the wings of the Cascade Land Conservancy’s Cascade Agenda program and is now an independent 501(c)(3) organization. We also invite you to review our strategic plan to see where we intend to move in the future.
Great City has always been a place where people of differing backgrounds come together to find the areas of common purpose and to work toward those ends. In working together, we have been able to create significant results including:
- passage of Complete Streets legislation
- launch of the Streets for People campaign and the Seattle Network
- passage of the Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy
- convening of the Leadership for Great Neighborhoods group
- implementation of our Neighborhood Assistance Program (NAP)
About the Executive Director
While there are a number of skills that are desirable in a Great City ED, the following qualities are requirements:
- Ability to work with neighborhood, business and environmental leaders
- A belief in the power of people working together to achieve common goals
- A desire to make Seattle a model of economic and environmental sustainability
The right candidate for our new Executive Director will have the right combination of the following skills:
- Leadership experience and the ability to inspire action
- Non-profit management experience:
- multiple programs;
- personnel;
- Grants
- budget ($100K+)
- Fundraising experience including grant writing
- Campaign experience including familiarity with Web 2.0 tools and organizing techniques
- Proven ability to be a clear, effective written and verbal communicator
- Experience working with and lobbying elected officials including an understanding the legal parameters of a 501(c)(3)
Compensation rates and work schedules are flexible and will be discussed with the Executive Committee as the hiring process moves forward.
Please email your resume, cover letter, and references to Great City c/o Allison Burson at the following address: allison.burson@greatcity.org.
Mar
25
via Inhabit
What are you making?
Mar
19
Last week at the National Bike Summit, Rep. James Oberstar (head of the House Transportation Committee and a bicycle commuter) pledged to bring us nationally to “Copenhagen levels of bicycling.” In case your only Danish points of reference are pastries and large blue cookie tins, half of Copenhageners commute by bike. While this may be an unrealistic goal in the US, there’s low-hanging fruit in our large cities.
Localities often have the ingenuity and flexibility to drive change, and more metropolitan areas are recognizing positive impacts of bicyling on the road and for public health. The majority of trips we make nationwide are less than three miles, so encouraging bicycle transportation for commuting and short trips through the day is a no-brainer.
Summit attendees agreed that much can be learned from each city’s strengths, though all have at least one blind spot. New York is striping lanes at a breakneck pace and even closing part of Broadway to cars! But they don’t have enough bike racks to accommodate hordes of new bicyclists, while Chicago is a leader in providing bike parking. Coordinated data will soon reveal where better facilities, and innovative safety and eduction programs, are getting more cyclists on the road.
What’s keeping more people from riding more often in Seattle? Is it safety concerns, the weather or simply the distances needed to be travelled? Add your feedback to the 2009 Report Card on Bicyling by taking Cascade Bicycle Club’s survey here.
Mar
16
New City vs. Old City Ideas
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Noted demographer Richard Florida has taken a look at what American
cities and “mega-regions” will rebound from our nation’s great
recession – and which won’t survive. Check out his ideas in the March
Atlantic Monthly.
Florida looks at the ways that high tech cities, America’s magnets for
educated, skilled people, will adjust to the new economy that will
emerge from the deep recession.
“Now we need a ‘new spatial fix for the next chapter of American
economic history.’ That fix will be high-quality, dense urban spaces in
the elite mega-regions, places where ideas and innovation can most
efficiently percolate much like what were seeing take shape in
(Seattle’s) South Lake Union.”
Seattle Times business columnist John Talton and Florida argue that
Seattle needs to be more attractive and affordable for all of Americas
classes, not just the upper crust. Urban centers must have
economically diverse populations.
Florida doesn’t believe that
suburbia goes away, but that it must be retrofitted with its own urban
centers, just as Seattle is doing.
However Talton and Florida agree that it will be “a hard sell to an
America accustomed to the age of the automobile and the illusion of
endless, wide-open spaces.“
As they predict, key improvements to Seattle’s emerging urban centers
beyond downtown continue to be denounced by an unlikely combination of
neighborhood folks and poverty activists.
A short piece in early March by John V. Fox of the Seattle Displacement
Coalition dismissed the Mercer East street improvements as a gift to
South Lake Union Urban Center developer Paul Allen – and presumably to
the other developers in the revitalizing South Lake Union.
Fox’s Seattle Displacement Coalition has also secured the gutting and
subsequent failure of the bills in the State Legislature’s current
session that would require some density around mass transit stations.
He claims that such redevelopment would displace low-cost housing
tenants. But the bills designated stringent goals for the inclusion of
low-cost and subsidized housing in denser redevelopment around light
rail stations. Erica Barnett in the Stranger wrote about the
irrationality of Fox’s position on transit station density.
Times writer Talton feels that successful urban centers are key to our
city’s economic future. Florida predicts in his At
lantic piece that
the re-set of the American economy will shape cities like Seattle which
Florida includes in his short list of “elite mega-regions.”
But Talton warns, “Even many people in blue-and-green Western
Washington may have a hard time with Florida’s ultimate conclusion:
that the spread-out, suburbanizing trends of the past 60 years have not
only run their course, but played a major role in distorting the
economy and fueling this recession.”
John Coney
Official Workplace Sponsor
Major Donors
Jabe Blumenthal
Doug and Maggie Walker
To see our other donors and individual members, click here.- @Great_City is having a party! The Fête du Flâneu! Tix here: http://biturl.cc/8Bk 1 week ago
- RT @AlexSteffen Proud owner of a new YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard!) tee from Seattle NGO @Great_City greatcity.org. That's how street I am. 2 weeks ago
- We're throwing a Fete du Flaneur! Join us 2/25! http://www.greatcity.org/2010/01/21/fete-du-flaneur/ 2 weeks ago
- We're changing our handle! Follow us to @Great_City. Pls RT. Thanks! 3 weeks ago
- RT @svrdesign RT @NateColeDaum Why the “20-minute neighborhood” beats auto efficiency: http://bit.ly/6ZhgcU 2009-12-29
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- Columbia Citizens
- Interbay District Blog
- Lake City Live
- B-Town Blog (Burien)
We're having a Party
On Thursday, February 25, Great City presents the Fête du Flâneur, a Fantastic Urban-Themed Party featuring special guests: Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, City Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith...
To learn more about the event, Click Here!
To purchase tickets for the event, Click Here!