Sunday was World Car-Free Day. The day before, there was a joyful critical mass ride and a climate change march. The biggest Kidical Mass Ride of 2024 in Ottawa will take place on Saturday. Cities for Everyone has free seminars coming up on The Power of the Commons and Towards Playable Cities.
These things are not unrelated and this article connects some of those dots. Here are a few of the highlights I took from it:
A fight for free, accessible public swimming pools, air-conditioned libraries, free museums, and community centers—can provide important heat relief and create places of fun connection for community members.
More free time can be a climate strategy. Lowering working hours (with living wages, of course) will give people more time to engage in a whole range of affordable activities—playing sports, gardening, hiking on public lands, or (importantly) organizing their community. There is also ample research that shows that a shorter workweek could limit carbon emissions, while also allowing people to live more fulfilled and balanced lives.
Connecting with nature and being outside has a proven positive impact on people’s well-being, but it needs to be accessible to everyone, not just those with cars or other expensive means of transportation.
Decarbonizing is not just a question of surviving climate change. It’s a question of creating policy to change our culture, and vice versa—the feedback loop we need to build a world we can all enjoy.
