Tag: Climate change

Boston Climate Action Plan – Draft 2 – Feedback period ends 30 September 2025 (this Tuesday)!

Matt Lawlor

The second draft of the city’s Climate Action Plan 2025 – which will guide the City through the next 5 years of efforts to reduce our collective carbon emissions and keep on track to hit a 50% drop from 2005 levels for community-wide emissions by 2030 (60% for municipal government emissions) and full carbon neutrality at a 100% drop from those levels by 2050 – has been available since the summer and the feedback period closes on this coming Tuesday, 30 September 2025. You can offer feedback by going HERE. The final draft is expected to be released in early 2026 with adoption/effectiveness in the spring. So, check out the plan and offer your feedback on what our city will be doing in the next 5 years to combat what is and remains the environmental challenge on this and at least the next several generations.

Given our twin focuses of being pro-housing and pro-walk, -bike, and -transit, we would direct your attention to the building and transportation sections of the plan.

For example, in the building section, steps such as streamlining permitting for de-carbonization of buildings, supporting housing stability through building upgrades, and support for affordable housing decarbonization are among what the city is considering.

For transportation, the actions include steps such a broad range of transit improvements (including Zone 1A regional rail citywide), encouraging safer walking and biking through infrastructure improvements that improve connections and reducing motor vehicle driving speeding (continuing the city’s mission toward Vision Zero by 2030), and planning for density and zoning for walkability (we have some recent experience on that here in Roslindale). Have at it by Tuesday!

4 Minutes for Walkability — What is it, how is it achieved, and what’s it good for?

Matt Lawlor Leave a comment

If you have time to click on this link at grist:

The key to fighting climate change and mortality? Walkable cities.

read the intro, and then watch the short video — I believe that’s a 4 minute time commitment in total — you’ll find it worth your while. An excellent summary of what makes a place walkable, how it’s achieved, and what it’s good for. Enjoy and then get out there and get to it!

Laudato Si’ – Pope Francis wades into the fray over climate change, and spends some time on walkability and placemaking

Matt Lawlor Leave a comment

It’s been almost three weeks since Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, the groundbreaking encyclical on the environment and the role that humanity plays in its ongoing degradation on a global scale. As the dust settles after the initial media blitz, it’s worth considering that a document that speaks broadly on the spiritual dimension of the interconnection of the crises in climate change, global poverty, and increasing inequality also sees the condition of our social interactions and the fabric of our urban places as critically worthy of examination and direction. An excerpt (emphasis added):

There is… a need to protect those common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes which increase our sense of belonging, of rootedness, of “feeling at home” within a city which includes us and brings us together. It is important that the different parts of a city be well integrated and that those who live there have a sense of the whole, rather than being confined to one neighbourhood and failing to see the larger city as space which they share with others. Interventions which affect the urban or rural landscape should take into account how various elements combine to form a whole which is perceived by its inhabitants as a coherent and meaningful framework for their lives. Others will then no longer be seen as strangers, but as part of a “we” which all of us are working to create…

Lynn Richards, who currently leads the Congress for the New Urbanism, has boiled it down in a piece entitled The Encyclical of the New Urbansim over at Better Cities & Towns. Lynn’s whole piece is worth reading, as is the encyclical itself, but Lynn seems to sum it up best here (emphasis, once again, added):

In his approach to urbanization and climate change, Pope Francis gave a global platform to the idea that the health of our natural environment is dictated by the shape and quality of our human communities—both our social connections and the physical places we inhabit.

Where and how we design, preserve, and build our streets, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions matter. Placemakers of all types, including New Urbanists, share with Pope Francis a conviction that our physical environment has a direct impact on our chances for happy, prosperous lives. Well-designed public places, neighborhoods, Main Streets, and rural villages help create community: healthy ways for people to live and socialize. These places also help reduce our impact on natural systems and can mitigate climate impacts.

The imperative at the local level is for walkable, well-designed development in neighborhoods connected by multiple, interlinked, and convenient networks (pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and auto) providing access to the broader city and region. Every neighborhood in Boston can achieve this vision. WalkUP Roslindale is dedicated to helping it happen right here in Roslindale.