Green Options

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My first post on green walking provided some hopefully handy tips for you to go walkabout, to get out in nature and do some green walking. In the age where any travel that is not sustainable is terribly costly in many, many ways, it is more imperative than ever for each of us to become a peripatetic.

But here is the good news: Green walking is not just “nature walking” per se, not just walkabout. Green walking is also ideal for city travel…helping cut down on many kinds of pollution, smog that obscures the lovely natural views everywhere, travel expenses, resource consumption, and driver rage, just to name a few things.

In order to facilitate your transition from commuter to sustainable commuter, from walker to green walker, I offer here a few more tips on green walking in a city environment…on going urban walkabout.

1. Like walkabouts in nature, urban walkabouts should be as sensual as possible. Although some urban settings have been deliberately “greened up” with strategic flowerbeds, parks, and eco-friendly architecture, many cities are truly urban jungles–forests of concrete. But even here you can listen to the cooing of pigeons or find some green things struggling for life in the cracks of sidewalks. And there are often flower shops, produce stands, and pets to be encountered. So enjoy these instances of nature-here-and-now whenever you can. Of course, the sun is almost always shining–or if not, then rain is falling or wind is blowing–so you still can likely get some sensual stimulation on your urban walkabout if you pay attention.

There is one thing Pittsburghers can agree upon, besides the greatness of the Penguins or Steelers. That is: “there’s way more bikes on the road this year, aren’t there?”

Indeed there are. Whether it’s for economic reasons, or the result of a growing green consciousness, I am one of hundreds of Pittsburgh bicyclists taking to the streets this year.

When I was transitioning into living sustainably, I thought I’d hate bicycling for transportation. But in just a few days, I realized what many other bicyclists in my community have realized, too: that I would honestly never want to travel any other way.

There’s so many benefits to bicycling! In a previous post, I mentioned that biking earned me the healthiest body I have ever had. There’s more than that, however.

In addition to conserving money, what about conserving time? Especially if you work a 9 to 5 job, you can get to work and home again at even half the rate of the cars stuck in traffic. Nothing feels quite so good as whizzing past long strings of cars, idling at red lights, in the downtown district.

Located in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a few kilometres inland from the Coromandel Coast, Auroville is an ideal township devoted to an experiment in human unity - a universal township in the making; for a population of up to 50,000 people from around the world. Auroville is recognised as the first and only internationally endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity and and in situ research on sustainable living and fulfilling all cultural, environmental, social and spiritual needs of mankind.