http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Tag: sustainability - Recent Posts en Sun, 31 May 2026 12:06:00 +0000 http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20062#post-321665 Wed, 29 Jan 2020 15:32:08 +0000 chdot 321665@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>“<br /> we need the will, foresight and courage</p> <p>“</p> <p>Of course the question is ‘who is the “we” ‘?</p> <p>Generally people have expected politicians to provide some guidance/leadership, but in recent years a lot of this has been subverted by focus groups and notions of ‘the will of the people’.</p> <p>When the ‘will’ is expressed as being against (for instance) the Iraq war or Brexit, then somehow is just a noisy minority.</p> <p>Climate Change action (school strikes etc.) and demos seem to have changed public opinion/understanding and put some pressure on politicians.</p> <p>But the current big dilemmas are 5G/Huawei and HS2 which may or may not be Smart or smart. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20062#post-321659 Wed, 29 Jan 2020 15:02:45 +0000 unhurt 321659@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Some really interesting stuff to think on in this article making the case against "smart cities" and in favour of rediscovering old approaches, urban rewilding, sponge cities &amp; symbiosis.</p> <p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/15/the-case-for-making-low-tech-dumb-cities-instead-of-smart-ones" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/15/the-case-for-making-low-tech-dumb-cities-instead-of-smart-ones</a> </p> <p><blockquote>Saxe pithily calls for redirecting some of our energy toward building “excellent dumb cities.” She’s not anti-technology, it’s just that she thinks smart cities may be unnecessary. “For many of our challenges, we don’t need new technologies or new ideas; we need the will, foresight and courage to use the best of the old ideas,” she says.</blockquote> </p>