News Tagged: Bottomfeeder

‘Straphanger’ author gives his take on transit systems at Oregon Transportation Summit

Posted on September 5, 2013

At age 8, Taras Grescoe decided that his Vancouver, B.C., residential street had too many cars chugging past. So he removed them.

“I completely redesigned our city block and modeled with Monopoly hotels what it would look like without cars,” Grescoe said. “I was this 8-year-old urban planning geek in the making.”

While his career took a different path, those early transportation experiences shaped a worldview Grescoe outlines in his latest book, “Straphanger.” Grescoe will present his observations as the keynote speaker for the Oregon Transportation Summit Sept. 16.

Register for the summit through the following link:
http://theotrec.org/events/subpage/OTS/page1

The author of nonfiction essays and books including “Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood” Grescoe is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Independent and National Geographic Traveler and has written for Gourmet, Salon and Wired.

If moving from a walkable neighborhood in Toronto to a car-dominated one in Vancouver first awakened Grescoe to how transportation shapes our cities, his car-free travels to cities across the world cement the thesis of “Straphanger”: Cars nearly killed our greatest cities but transit can help bring them back.
 
Grescoe details the loss of urban public space as cities that formed around streetcars and transit lines gradually grew to serve automobiles. “The car, especially in the postwar years, was the thing that really turned North American cities,” he said. “Every time you get in a car, you are turning your back on the public realm.

“You subtly undermine the quality of life in the city when you opt for private transportation.”

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Tags: bicycling, bottomfeeder, emissions, montreal, oregon transportation summit, straphanger, taras grescoe, transit, walking