Urban News Vol. 32

Sustainability. I am not certain and don't have the time right now to check through my previous 82 posts, but I believe that this may be my first one to highlight a sustainability topic.

How does sustainability fit in with the mission? I think the way to answer that is to look at the sustainability benefit inherent in a living arrangement that promotes reactivation/densification of historic cities surrounded by a meaningful agricultural component in what has since become the land hungry, pavement heavy suburbs.

The RRCDC obviously makes the connection as their lecture series for 2008-2009 has been structured around the theme of Sustainable Urbanism. In my volunteer efforts with the design center, I spent last night on the campus of RIT promoting the series through poster placement. This brings me to the original intended topic of RIT's launch of their Institute for Sustainability and the approval of the state's first doctoral program in sustainability.

Students in the program will attempt to tackle some of the high-tech end of sustainability endeavors. For instance a program to develop renewable conductors to replace natural resources like copper economically and sustainably is one of the many challenges faced by the Institute. RIT is recognizing that the sustainability issues of the 21st century are not of the type that can simply be solved by throwing more engineers at the problem. An interdisciplinary team-based approach (forming a collective generalist) appears to be the approach programatically promoted by the Institute itself.

And beacuse I never know when I'm going to get back to the blog these days (I'm out promoting at UR and MCC the next two nights), I'm going to tack on a couple of urbanist interest stories.

Dollars Still There for Midtown Demo

by Jim Aroune, RNews

Article Key Point:

• Despite budget crisis, state will keep $50 million pledge to help Rochester tear down Midtown Plaza

I wasn't going to comment, but I found it humorous that Mayor Duffy took on the bloggers of the area at the end of that article. I can't imagine he was referring to this, but I hope not. I agreed with his comment regarding 'right-sizing' the Paetec building going forward.

Amtrak Ridership Up 11 Percent in 1 Year
by Veronica Chiesi Brown, RNews

Article Key Points:

• Amtrak announced 28.7 million riders for (I'm assuming) 2007, up 11% from (again, I'm assuming) 2006
• Ticket revenue increased 14%, to $1.7 billion
• Congress passed an authorization for $13 billion in funding for Amtrak over five years which is veto-proof and expected to be signed into law

Hopefully Amtrak can increase its rolling stock and engine inventory even if they can't construct more track capacity on non-owned right-of-way. If nothing else, they should be able to offer daytime service between this area and the Midwest or lower fares by attaching more coach cars to Empire Service trains.