How does a region handle its sprawl issue and turn around a moribund suburban housing market at the same time? One way is to reconfigure Northeast Ohio suburbs to be more attractive to those seeking a walk and bike friendly neighborhood. Narrowing streets and introducing 'brick-lined' intersections, street trees and public art like Shaker Heights did a few years back in the Chagrin and Lee area makes the idea of parking and walking more attractive. The makeover of that intersection could carry lessons for the Warrensville-Chagrin-Northfield-Van Aken confusion of streets a mile or so east.

There are amazing similarities and, of course, stark differences between those two intersections. The vacancy rate of the Chagrin-Lee neighborhood is 3.7%, which is lower than 84.2% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to Neighborhood Scout. It also has a higher rate of adults with an advanced degrees than 98.6% of the neighborhoods in America. Some interesting facts about their commute patterns include: The average commute time is 10-15 minutes which is “shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.” Most residents (80.5%) drive alone in a private car to get to work. But, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (6.3%) and 5.5% of residents take the train for their daily commute.

• Cleveland Sustainability Chief, Jenita McGowan, shares her perspective on Cleveland’s local food movement, and the work ahead. In the latest 2019 email, she writes: “Because Cleveland is advanced in its urban agriculture policy and the movement toward a more localized food economy, the work left for us to do will require continued commitment, attention to equity, innovation, and fortitude for incremental progress. Cleveland is advanced enough to have already ‘plucked’ much of the low hanging fruit of re-localizing the food economy through legislation, policy, grant-making, education and a lot of hard work by a lot of talented and dedicated people."
• If you’re all about spreading the Gospel of local food, check out E4S’ Local Food-Akron style meet up on Feb. 8 and the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Year of Local Food-related The Year of Local Food—A First Taste on Feb. 21
• If you believe in Cleveland’s ability to transform its lakefront—with Mayor Jackson’s proposed downtown waterfront development plan and the underdog and under funded West Shoreway boulevard project—then you’ll want to participate in this community meeting this Wednesday, Jan. 25

Why is climate change such a challenging issue to tackle? What happens when you introduce a philosophical approach to the problem? GreenCityBlueLake Institute and the Natural History Museum did—with Case ethics professor, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, at the Ethics of Climate Change presentation back in December.

Climate change is an intergenerational concern, he said, and the thorniness of that raises a new question of ethics. “The people around 100 years from now that I’m doing this to, what would it be like to look them in the face?”

Solutions to climate change may come from a better system of global governance. “Our institutions work within a nation-state, and that’s not conducive to dealing with a problem on a global scale. It lets powerful nations make powerless people in the world, such as small island states.

“It’s not often that you get a new question of ethics (but with climate change) our system mostly doesn’t think beyond the current generation. There’s no way to have that (conversation) with our future generations. They can’t give us anything, but we can ruin their worlds.

We need to develop a moral status of non-human beings, and to try to think as a society beyond election cycles and quarterly returns. That is why climate change is ‘the perfect moral storm.’”

“What does it say about us that the over use of resources—that our production method is based on vaporizing all the carbon on the planet—is the wanton destruction of life?”

We have positive examples of how to respond, he added, notably, with our grandparents and the Greatest Generation. “They had the moral idea of making sacrifice for the future. It become the noble choice.”

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· Kaid Benfield blogs that Cleveland and its suburbs will be stronger when our corporate leaders admit that re-investing in the city/a dense urban place benefits their business by helping to retain workers and boost productivity. Benfield writes: “perhaps the strongest potential force for bringing sense to our settlement patterns and strengthening central cities may be the business community.” He cites the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland study that looks at density in relation to productivity. We agree—corporate sprawl the likes of Eaton and UH and American Greetings is sending the wrong signal to our elected officials and policy makers: That there's no problem with business as usual; with MPOS subsidizing low density/high energy development with highway expansions and interchanges; and with cities that refuse to rezone for traditional town centers not cul-de-sac gated communities.

· Removing highways that sap the life out of cities is a hot topic on the national stage. Next American City is hosting a discussion on February 23 that looks at efforts to tear down urban highways in Providence, Milwaukee, Philly and the Bronx (other efforts of note include Buffalo and Seattle). Cleveland’s West Shoreway should be included in these national discussions.

· EcoWatch reports that more than 250 Ohioans—led by State Rep. Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown)—assembled on the west lawn of the Ohio Statehouse yesterday to voice their opposition to hydraulic fracturing.