[SustainableTompkins] bike to work

[Cynthia Yahn]

Dear Andrejs,

Greater population density can be achieved by redeveloping land within the 
city of Ithaca. Such redevelopment will have multi-story, mixed use 
buildings and integrated shared parking structures.

For the past 12 years, our company - Aeon Development (no website, if you 
want to Google the political work use my personal name) has been working 
privately with planning, architectural, engineering, sustainability, 
traffic, and financial consultants from around the US and a few European 
countries - on research, a masterplan, and equity and debt investment for 
the West End and Waterfront area, with the intention of achieving greater 
population density and all of the high quality of life requirements 
mentioned in the foregoing series of Sustainable Tompkins e-mails.

Other cities have embarked on such projects either incrementally or 
wholesale with a certain amount of success, through municipal or private 
initiatives or both. Ithaca can "grow up" as well, but it takes more time, 
money, political work and cooperation than we find locally, in order to 
produce such a project. For us, it is heartening and encouraging to witness 
the on-going discussions that Sustainable Tompkins has catalyzed. We 
especially enjoy George Franz's reality checks/perspectives on seemingly 
intractable issues.

Sincerely,
Cynthia Yahn
AEON DEVELOPMENT, LLC
P.O. Box 519
Ithaca, NY 14851


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrejs Ozolins" <andrejs at ozolins.com>
To: "Sustainable Tompkins County listserv" 
<sustainabletompkins at lists.mutualaid.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 9:37 AM
Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] bike to work


> Andy Goodell wrote:
>> ...
>> Short of everyone renting out their space to more people or subdividing 
>> their land to allow for more density, how do you envision increasing 
>> density being any better?
> I think these matters really would be a good first order of business, if
> we're to look for a way out of this mess. The situation is serious
> enough to warrant a reexamination of all the premises of our current
> culture. What, exactly, would be wrong with everyone renting out their
> space to more people? Or subdividing land? As for how increased density
> would be any better, George has sketched enough of it to get my attention.
>
>
>> The towns and cities have been built, and they could have been built 
>> better, but I don't see an easy way to change that now.
>
> Probably there is a way to change it now -- are we actually waiting for
> an *easy* way to do it? But even without changing what's built, at least
> we could stop building more of the same.
>
> Andrejs
> _______________________________________________
> For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, 
> please visit:  http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
>
> RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
> SustainableTompkins at lists.mutualaid.org
> http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
> free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
>
>