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Smaller sites for schools

From the school siting list –

Two noteworthy excerpts from this piece include:

“More than 5,500 students attend Cypress Bay, which was built in 2002
for 3,400.”

And this:

“The district typically needs at least 40 acres for high schools, a
problem in a county where large tracts of land are scarce and price tags
are sky-high for any available large parcels. And the district is under
the gun to find a spot.”

Note: I wonder if they have thought about using smaller sites. I have
yet to see a study that correlates academic outcomes with large school
sites.
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"Metro Kills:" Ghastly Sight, No Solution

"Pedestrian death, like drug addiction and teenage pregnancy, is one of those issues that everyone agrees is a blight upon the land, a serious yet seemingly eternal problem that eludes practical solutions and frustrates the governed and the elected alike."
This is the intro to the Washington Post article which talks about a DC Metro bus that ran over and killed two women that was caught on security cameras. Some of the comments to the article are truly sad "Jesus, this was an accident…." that happened because it was more important to bully your way through on coming traffic then to look for pedestrians. It comes down to traffic fatalities, the LEADING cause of death for kids and the bicycle and (mostly) pedestrian traffic fatalities that occur in urban areas is simply alarming. For Baltimore 36% of our traffic fatalities involve a pedestrian (5.4% travel mode share) and 2% involve a cyclist (0.4% travel mode share.) There is something terribly, terribly wrong of calling this just an accident.
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Car sharing in Baltimore update

From Parking Authority of Baltimore City –
In 2006, the Parking Authority issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a car sharing company to come to Baltimore. Zipcar had brought the issue to our attention originally, but did not ultimately submit a proposal. Flexcar was the only organization to answer the RFP, but they did so to our satisfaction, and we spent most of 2007 working with them to identify potential users, working out the terms of the contract and determining a couple dozen locations for the vehicles. On October 31, Flexcar and Zipcar announced that they were merging. We met with Regional Vice Presidents of both companies and learned that it was Zipcar
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UN climate talks under pressure to drop 2020 goals

The US has reportedly pressured the UN into dropping its "hard targets" for greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Reuters, which quoted a delegate, the U.S. effort to avoid hard targets was successful, and the U.N. has dropped its call for 25-40% reductions from industrialized nations by 2020. Japan and Canada also supported the U.S. position that the agreement being negotiated in Bali
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The Story of Stuff


What is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
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