December 29, 2017 (sfgate.com)

By Carolyne Zinko

January 4, 2018 (SFChronicle.com)

Photo: Courtesy Of Sasquatch Books

What we own is not who we are. An organized home is not necessarily a decluttered home. Understand the distinction, say Kyle Quilici and Cary Fortin, and you might just be headed for a better quality of life.

The two are the forces behind New Minimalism, a San Francisco decluttering and interior design company, and believe that living with fewer possessions is not a life of grim deprivation but one that’s comfortable and cozy.

That’s the premise of their business, and their new book, “New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living,” (Sasquatch Press, 195 pages), which hit the shelves Jan. 2. Part therapy and part interior design, it’s just the thing to dive into as we seek inspiration for calm and order in the new year.

Quilici, an interior designer, and Fortin, who previously worked in corporate law, describe their philosophy as a “middle ground between traditional minimalism and over-the-top consumerism,” and fill the book with photos of airy interiors; stories about the experiences of real-life clients; tips for donating, composting, recycling; lists of websites for wardrobes and interior design; and more.

There are quizzes, too, to help collectors (or would-be hoarders) determine which of four common archetypes they fall into, with regard to having trouble throwing things away. Quilici, who has a degree in organizational behavior, and Fortin, who studied psychology, detail the mental blocks that prevent each personality type from letting go, and provide suggestions for overcoming them. Awareness, after all, is the first step of change.

“The need for a complicated organizational system is usually indicative of too much stuff to begin with,” they write in the book’s opening pages. “A beautiful, easy-to-maintain, organized home is simply one of the many positive by-products of a thoughtfully curated and decluttered life.”

Their philosophy dovetails with the trend toward living small, too.

Millennials tempered by the recession of 2008 and laden with college debt are more interested in experience than acquisition. A slew of TV shows are popular for living small, including HGTV’s “Tiny House, Big Living” and Bravo TV’s “Stripped,” which strips participants of all possessions to see how they fare nude, without money, furniture or clothes. Meanwhile, books such as “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo are charting on best-seller lists (while simultaneously inspiring a backlash from those proud of their possessions).

“In society in general, we look at things as enhancing our lives, so there’s only a positive association with having things,” said Quilici in a recent chat from her office in San Francisco. (Fortin recently moved to Boise, Idaho.)

“We like to talk about the hidden costs of things — the cost to store them; repairing them if they get broken; remembering where things are; returning things because you bought it online and it didn’t fit,” Quilici said. “Stuff ends up taking a lot of bandwidth to manage.”

The two met by chance while carpooling to a yoga retreat in Ojai (Ventura County) in 2011 and bonded over a mutual interest in sustainable living. Fortin founded the business in 2013.

Their clients, who numbered nearly 100 this year, are often people in transition — college students living away from home for the first time; people experiencing breakups; older adults who are downsizing or experiencing life-changing medical conditions. Fortin and Quilici typically work in five-day sessions, focusing with clients on mind-set to ensure they’re ready to begin; asking how they want to feel when they walk in the door of their home (calm? energized? proud?); and then grouping possessions in categories (wardrobe, kitchen, household supplies, etc.) before sorting for donation or disposal.

Software engineer Madelin Woods, 30, worked with Quilici and Fortin in late 2014, after going through a breakup and moving into a studio while on the verge of leaving her job at Square.

With New Minimalism’s help, she donated “two or three giant SUVs full of stuff,” she recalled. She learned to recognize an object’s sentimental value, tell herself she didn’t need it, take a picture of it, thank it for being in her life and then give it away.

“You’re letting go of stuff, but you get to breathe new life and light into your space,” Woods recalled. “That’s important when you’re going through something hard. There’s opportunity here.”

Now head of her own startup and splitting her time between apartments in San Francisco and New York, Woods has resisted the temptation to accumulate to excess, noting, “My way of arranging my apartment now and bringing things into and sending things out of my life was affected. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without their influence.”

Similarly, Abby Davisson, 38, director of the Gap Foundation in San Francisco, and her husband, Ross, used the duo’s services when she was pregnant with their second child and the couple wanted to stay in their three-bedroom house without feeling crowded. “We knew what had to happen,” she said, “but we didn’t have a vision of how it could.”

One day was spent clearing out a bedroom that had been used as a home office and a storage space for boxes of belongings from cross-country moves, shedding old party costumes, sets of china and framed certificates of achievement from grade school. The next session was devoted to setting up a nursery in the empty bedroom. (The home office was moved to the garage.)

Davisson kept one teacup and saucer from each set of china for tea with girlfriends, and took photos of her certificates and donated the frames. Whenever she balked and suggested she might need an item for future use, she was asked to consider when she’d used it last, and whether there was someone she could borrow it from instead.

“It’s intense,” Davisson recalled of the memories that resurfaced. “It’s emotionally exhausting; I felt drained.”

Creating a nursery, however, was “exhilarating,” she said, as they focused on making the room functional and aesthetically pleasing. “You could see the fruits of your labor in letting go of things,” she said, “as the room started to take shape.”

The training has made her relentless in deciding what stays and goes. With an app called Artkive, she photographs her kids’ artwork instead of allowing it to pile up in the house.

“I feel calm, despite lots of chaos in our lives with two parents working and two kids,” she said. “They’ve helped us make our home a haven.”

Removing excess from our lives is a First World problem, for sure. But Quilici’s got a point when she notes: “What we value, if we get deeply introspective, doesn’t have anything to do with stuff.”

The four archetypes of collectors

Connected

Has an emotional, relational and impassioned way of approaching the world, treasuring family and friends. Clings to souvenirs, even if they do not use or enjoy them. Their block is sentimentality. They must learn to separate memories and experiences from possessions and mementos, appreciate the item for what it once meant and release it for use by someone else.

Practical

Operates from logic; is data-driven, methodical and factual. They are limited in their understanding of the effect their things have, ignoring how cluttered the space is and how it negatively affects themselves and others. Their block is usefulness. If an object has a perceived use for any person in any circumstance, they will hold onto it — even if it’s not useful for them. Instead of thinking “I might” or “I could,” they need to focus on whether they need the object right now.

Energetic

Exudes energy in tackling projects and obstacles; innovates at work, is deeply committed to hobbies. They tend to be chronic over-schedulers who run 10 minutes late and rarely finish projects, being unrealistic with their time. Their block is an inability to say no. They must determine top priorities, say no to activities that don’t align with those priorities, and schedule time for actions that do. To-do lists are their best friends.

Frugal

Acts from mindful self-awareness and contentment, plans for the future but is rooted in the present. Eliminates expenses that don’t add to health, joy or happiness goals; are intentional about how to expend energy. Scarcity is a worry; they replay past financial traumas or project anxieties into the future, holding onto items purchased in the past to quell such fears. Their block is money. They need to soothe internal discomfort with actions, not external objects — exercising, sitting in nature, dancing to a favorite song or calling a friend.

Source: “New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living,” by Cary Fortin and Kyle Quilici

Carolyne Zinko

Style Reporter

Carolyne Zinko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: czinko@sfchronicle.com

(BigThink.com)

By Michael Shermer Science Writer

Hay House
Published on Oct 28, 2015

Register today: http://goo.gl/0JDdqm

Are you living your life as intended? Are you listening to the infinite intelligence within?

In Dr. Dyer’s free video series, he shares profound spiritual lessons he’s discovered in living from that place of infinite intelligence within and how living in the light provides positive changes in our lives. In this powerful video, you’ll learn the biggest regret of the dying as written by Bronnie Ware in The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Do you wish you had the courage to live the life you know you are destined to live? Dr. Dyer shares two very personal moments that completely changed the course of his life. Both of these moments were occurred because he listened to those inner callings we all have. After listening to the infinite wisdom, his life began to change in profound and positive ways. What he discovered on his journey was we all came here with a purpose, with something greater to accomplish. We are not the physical body we inhabit but are part of the infinite intelligence of all creation. When you summon the courage and heed that inner calling, listen to that infinite intelligence within, that’s when your life begins to have purpose. In Dr. Dyer’s new online video course, Manifest Your Soul’s Purpose, you’ll use powerful meditations with readings that will help you understand that the laws of the material world do not apply in the presence of the God realized. The thoughts you think are not just happenstance; they are within you for a reason, for a purpose, for a destiny you are called to fulfill and that is unique to you. You’ll realize the light of who you really are and why you are here. Dr. Dyer and several spiritual teachers including Anita Moorjani, Immaculée Ilibagiza and Scarlet Lewis take you on a remarkable journey where you’ll discover that you are capable of using this divine intelligence to create the life you were destined to live, the power of forgiveness, and recognizing the light within! For more information about Dr. Dyer’s new online video course, click here: http://goo.gl/0JDdqm

(Submitted by Robert McEwen, H.W., M.)

by Derek Beres 

In a discussion with Larry King, Oprah Winfrey tells his audience that the book, The Secret, offers an essential teaching she’d known since starring in the 1985 movie, The Color Purple: you are responsible for your own life. She explains this by retelling an incident in which she was praying to be picked for the movie at the exact moment Steven Spielberg called.

Winfrey is no newcomer to magical thinking. She’s long promoted it on her show, in her magazine, and with her television network. Besides being a Rhonda Byrnes acolyte, Winfrey gave a platform for Jenny McCarthy to run with disproven vaccination-autism claims and fully endorsed Dr. Oz as he spread pseudoscience on her shows. 

Winfrey has certainly been a strong female personality for decades, yet balancing entertainment and reality has long been challenging. Now, after an inspiring monologue at the Golden Globes, she is both being asked to and considering a presidential run in 2020. 

That the cult of celebrity has overtaken the American consciousness is not surprising. The last two presidential outcomes produced considerable awe and consternation from the other side: Mitt Romney’s visible shock when conceding to Obama in 2012 and, well, you know the other. Yet a basic understanding of history could have predicted the forces behind both of these elections. 

Maybe it’s the problem of manifest destiny: Americans believing we’re endowed with a sacred duty to excel like no other nation in history has fostered all sorts of delusions. Perhaps it’s the disconnect from the reality of war and authoritarianism we have long enjoyed. Our relative comfort has allowed our imaginations to run wild, so run they do. Unchecked fantasies are known to arrive with unforeseen consequences. 

There is precedent to our current moment because there’s always been precedent, argues Kurt Andersen in his latest book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. The bestselling author and host of Studio 360 has written an encyclopedic entry into the mayhem of modern America, informing readers that along every step of the way it’s been mayhem, beginning with the very first immigrants. 

No, not the pilgrims; the Jamestown colony. The first English settlement was not in Plymouth, as popular lore goes. That distinction goes to a series of gold-seeking groups that unsuccessfully tried to settle in Virginia. Eventually abandoning their dreams of gold—the term “fool’s gold” is derived from their miscalculations—the colonies did eventually thrive with a crop that plagues us to this day: tobacco. 

Plymouth isn’t the only myth Andersen dispels in Fantasyland. He spends chapters focused on the nineteen-sixties, an era loathed by fifties-loving conservatives and adored by progressives. Problem is, that era initiated a confluence of forces that allowed magical thinking to dominate in medicine, health, politics, and just about every other field. 

This, Andersen told me, is just a continuum that began with an extreme Protestantism that America was founded on, which continues today through a “de-privileging of reason and science over magic and magical thinking and fabulism of every kind.” He continues: 

What I call this big bang that happened in the sixties—my argument is that it’s no coincidence that that belief in homeopathy or crystals or Carlos Castenada taking peyote to become a brujo in those best selling series of books, all of the bohemian magic and alternative health practices and so forth, which got going in nineteen-sixties, just as this incredible revival of the most magical and supernaturalist forms of Protestant Christianity came raging back.

It’s not as if the sixties didn’t produce positive benefits, including civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism. Yet the underlying strains of essentialism and dualism required for magical thinking reached new heights in both popular religion and on the fringes. From the looks of 2018, we’re continuing to soar. 

Andersen didn’t set out to write Fantasyland because of Trump’s victory. He never suspected it possible, even when the reality show star became the Republican nominee around the time he was finalizing edits of the book. Yet when the election was over Andersen realized he had laid out the perfect blueprint for the manifestation of the idea that a billionaire elitist could win as a populist champion of the working class. 

Not that Andersen exclusively blames religion. He’s more aligned with Sam Harris’s evidence-backed spirituality than Richard Dawkins’s hawkish atheism. During our discussion, Andersen is clear to point out that freedom of religion, both as a belief system and a topic of debate, is an essential American quality. It’s the extreme quality to it that’s disconcerting. 

In individualist-focused America the notion of many truths dominates. It was heard in the beginning of Oprah’s speech: “What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.” When everyone has a truth they tend to take their truth as fact. Andersen quotes four-term US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to me: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Day by day that line is blurrier. 

Unlike many books required by publishers today, Fantasyland does not end with a four-steps-to-overcoming-magical-thinking guide. It is a descriptive gem, not a prescriptive trope. Andersen explicitly rules out the possibility of his recommendations becoming reality. We’re in too deep for a sudden reversal, he told me, using the example of the “pathological individualism” gun rights advocates have employed over the last few decades. They’ve gotten so drunk on self-anointed mythical heroism that comprehending data proves impossible. 

Once we go down these various paths of creating reality television or whatever it is, of turning pieces of our cities into little Disney Worlds, we can’t turn it back except in our individual lives. In terms of the American life being what I call the fantasy-industrial complex, I’m not without hope, but once this set of boxes is open it’s hard to imagine a future where we return to the previous version of normalcy. 

In her book, The Human Advantage, Brazilian neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel reminds readers that “evolution is not progress, but simply change over time.” America has experienced a variety of changes, yet as Andersen shows the country has long been rooted in mindsets separate from the facts of reality. 

Oprah’s Golden Globes moment is a long overdue and beautiful expression of the #metoo movement, uncomfortable and provocative at a time when her industry needs such provoking. It provides a wonderful template for using media to promote a social agenda, which is political in its own right. But that does not make a celebrity qualified to be a politician. As Andersen writes on the last page of Fantasyland, 

Remember when viral was a bad thing, referring only to the spread of disease? The same goes for what you read and watch and believe. 

Fantasyland won’t instruct you on what to watch and believe. What it does is educate on how we’ve arrived here. Where we evolve next is anybody’s guess, yet without an understanding of where we’ve been one thing is certain: we’re going to repeat our mistakes. Then we’ll be doomed to buy into the fantasyland-industrial complex once again. 

~ Derek Beres is the author of Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health. Based in Los Angeles, he is working on a new book about spiritual consumerism. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.

Jordan B. Peterson quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as saying that “…the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” After viewing most of Peterson’s Biblical Series, I remembered that I had a copy of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago , which includes Parts I and II, and decided it was high time to read at least that much.

Here is a rather chilling passage (from Part I, pp. 173-175) in which Solzhenitsyn probes the relationship between ideology and evil.  After describing NKVD director Genrikh Yagoda‘s use of ikons for target practice, Solzhenitsyn goes on:  

“Just how are we to understand that?  As the act of an evildoer?  What sort of behavior is it?  Do such people really exist?

“We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any.  It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple.  But when the great world literature of the past — Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens — inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception.  The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured.  They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black.  And they reason: ‘I cannot live unless I do evil. So I’ll set my father against my brother! I’ll drink the victim’s suffering until I am drunk with them!’  Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.

“But no; that’s not the way it is!  To do evil a human must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.  Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him.  The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses.  Because they had no ideology.

“Ideology — that’s what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.  That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.  That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late) by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

“Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.  This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed.  How, then do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist?  And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.

“There was a rumor going the rounds between 1918 and 1920 that the Petrograd Cheka, headed by Uritsky, and the Odessa Cheka, headed by Deich, did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos.  I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were.  Following the practice of the bluecaps [the uniformed sections of the NKVD wore blue caps…], I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible.  How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years?  Take t away from the working class?  Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn’t their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic and thereby assist our march into the future?  Wasn’t it expedient?

“That is precisely the line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross.  But the evildoer does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.

“Physics is aware of phenomena that occur only at threshold magnitudes, which do not exist until a certain threshold encoded by and known to nature has been crossed.  No matter how intense a yellow light you shine on a lithium sample, it will not emit electrons.  But as soon as a weak bluish light begins to glow, it does emit them.  (The threshold of the photoelectric effect has been crossed.)  You can cool oxygen to 100 degrees below zero Centigrade and exert as much pressure as you want; it does not yield, but remains a gas.  But as soon as 183 degrees is reached, it liquefies and begins to flow.

“Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude.  Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life.  He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again.  But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope.  But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.”

For more information: 

On the cities of Petrograd and Odessa, click here, and here; 

On the Cheka, click here; 

On Uritsky, click here; as to Deich, the only person I could find by that name who was involved in the Russian Revolution is Lev Deich (click here)– though he seems to have been a writer/journalist rather than Chekist, so maybe someone who knows the history better than I do can help here?

“I don’t know if you might do this also, but I will have an idea I want to launch, and everything distracts me from launching it. It is like the universe conspires against me because I have a strong intention.

The Tibetans call it the denying force. Until we surrender to letting go of outcome, there will be resistance of some kind to achieving our desired goal.

So the recipe is ~
1) Intend
2) Let go

It is a conversation in heaven. We get to listen and experience the process. Lessons learned and appreciation for the lesson granted.

Thank you Source~

It is a journey we take on our path, but we are always on the path, not really going anywhere. We never leave home in reality. We make up goals and this judgement of a final sort, that

THIS is what we SHOULD do to be happy. Wrong!! OOPS!!

Stop and Be Here Now.

Feel the moment with your heart.

Sense all the universe where you are.

The universe is all present in this moment.

All is one and connected contributing to the whole.

Infinite possibilities are present in this moment.

Listen.

Learn.

Love.

When I am not attached to out come it happens almost by magic very easily and quickly.

That is the answer to the eternal question of where is happiness? It is right where you are right now!

Simple.

Love,
robert mcewen
mentor

It’s unhealthy to live next to freeways—but the homes aren’t the problem

Los Angeles freeways could become community assets, much like the way San Francisco remade the Embarcadero from a double-decker freeway into a grand, multimodal boulevard—where people want to live, work, and visit.  Shutterstock.com

A new Los Angeles Times investigation confirms what researchers have said for years: Living near freeways is not only extremely unhealthy, the most dangerous pollution travels farther and sticks around longer than previously thought. This expands the area in our cities where it is unsafe to live.

The Times report includes a link to a story documenting residents’ anger that Los Angeles continues to let apartments and condos rise so close to freeways.

But the city should not be blamed for letting people move so close to the deadly stream of cars. The city should be blamed for allowing a deadly stream of cars to continue to travel so close to where people need to live.

About 1.2 million Angelenos live within 500 feet of local freeways, what was long considered to be the “danger zone.” The new report says that 1,000 feet can be just as dangerous, depending on the time of day. It also finds that major streets carrying more than 10,000 cars per day—including Sepulveda, La Cienega and Wilshire—are just as unhealthy as freeways.

In a huge portion of the city, residents are sentenced to a long list of debilitating diseases, chronic health problems, and shorter life expectancy. It’s not just Los Angeles. An estimated 30 to 45 percent of all urban residents in the U.S. live in areas that put them at risk.

The Times’ investigation provides an important service to Angelenos concerned about their health. It includes a nifty tool for residents to find out how close they live to the nearest freeway, plus tips on how to decrease exposure to harmful particles, such as avoiding freeways at certain times, closing and sealing all windows, and running an AC unit 24 hours a day.

But much of the advice is unrealistic for many Angelenos. For people looking for an affordable place to live, an apartment near a freeway or busy street might be the only option. And, for people who commute without cars, freeway pollution is impossible to avoid. In many parts of the city, our public transit stations are built smack dab in the middle of our busiest freeways.

A new report from the Los Angeles Times says living within 1,000 feet of a freeway can be dangerous, depending on the time of day.   Shutterstock.com

There are neighborhoods, like in Boyle Heights, for example, where all of the homes, offices, shops, schools, and parks are less than 1000 feet from a freeway. These residents might spend a majority of their days without ever leaving the zone that’s known to be unhealthy. What do we tell those people? Stay inside, run your AC constantly, relocate?

The city, for its part, does require pricey filtration systems for new construction projects. But the filters, which do not remove all toxic chemicals from the air, do nothing to help all the Angelenos who live and work in older buildings near freeways.

Many of these homes have been around since before freeways were built. Neighborhoods were carved up in order to raise highways, and now these homes pose major health risks.

Even the city’s planners agree that letting people live this close to freeways is a bad idea. Last year, planning commissioner Dana Perlman said he’d no longer support putting balconies on freeway-adjacent projects like Geoff Palmer’s Orsini apartment complex, where residents can essentially high-five commuters on the 110/101 interchange in Downtown:

“I really do not want to be continuing to drive down our city’s freeways and look at residential multifamily residential towers next to the freeways with balconies with furniture on them inviting people to go out and breathe those poisonous fumes.”

Yet Perlman’s quote reveals what’s wrong with the city’s approach—I’m driving on those freeways, and I’m going to keep driving on those freeways, so just move people away from my poisonous fumes so I can keep driving, okay?

Councilmember José Huizar wants to go further, implementing buffer areas around freeways to analyze and prevent construction there. Are we really going to continue to widen these scars through the city, stopping new development here while forcing our most marginalized residents to continue breathing the air in these 1,000-foot wide dead zones? Or are we actually going to reclaim these valuable lands as safe places for our neighbors to live?

Every time this issue is broached, there’s sentiment from local lawmakers that the introduction of emissions-free electric cars will solve the problem. In fact, a state bill has just been introduced that would ban the sale of new fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040.

But as the Times investigation notes, electric cars will not completely improve air quality due to the continued presence of brake dust and particles from roadways. Fewer cars is the only pathway to healthier communities.

We can’t wait for the slow (but growing!) adoption rate of electric vehicles when we have a housing crisis to address. Los Angeles County needs over 500,000 housing units to bring rents down.

With anti-density groups succeeding at forcing development out of desirable neighborhoods, often the only available land for developers to build at the size and scale needed to solve the housing shortage problem is near busy roads and freeways. It’s the reason that many of these residential buildings are so close to the freeways in the first place.

According to recommendations by the California Air Resources Board, the “foremost strategy for reducing pollution exposure near high-volume roadways is to minimize traffic pollution in the first place.” The agency’s recommendation? “Encouraging and facilitating the replacement of vehicle trips with walk, bike, and transit trips.”

The Air Resources Board’s recommendations suggest physical improvements to high-capacity roads like wider sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and dedicated transit lanes to help reduce vehicle trips.

The document also recommends speed limit reductions, including roundabouts, as a way to reduce dangerous emissions. That means the road diets that transportation planners are implementing to help save lives would also improve the health of people who live near busy streets.

View image on Twitter

Alissa Walker@awalkerinLA

This is the new Franklin Ivar Urban Park, tucked around the 101 overpass in Hollywood. Tiny parks like this would be a fairly easy way to start reclaiming the acres of LA land ravaged by freeways.

10:09 PM – Nov 12, 2017

•   33 Replies
•   1616 Retweets
•   9797 likes

In addition, the agency recommends adding trees and vegetation, converting asphalt to parks and open space, and constructing buildings of varying heights to help filter and disperse pollution instead of trapping it around roadways.

Another idea? Dismantling LA’s most densely populated freeways entirely, as many cities have done with much success (and without any impact on traffic).

The stretch of the 101 from Downtown to Hollywood would make an excellent candidate. It often travels at-grade, is well-served by transit like Metro’s Red line, and will eventually be bookended by two proposed freeway cap parks.

Instead of being a health risk to those who live nearby, the 101 could become an asset to the community, much like the way San Francisco remade the Embarcadero from a double-decker freeway into a grand, multimodal boulevard—where people want to live, work, and visit.

In order to do this citywide, and at the magnitude that’s needed, our rail network and dedicated bus lanes would have to be even more rapidly expanded. That, and incentivizing housing around those transportation modes, should be the goal of city councilmembers and planning commissioners.

We shouldn’t make planning decisions that preserve freeways. Cars won’t be around forever. People will always need places to live.