Seattle is not yet a sustainable city, not by a long shot. But its transportation policies do serve as useful examples of the main methods now being used to reduce people's automobile dependence, as shown by this fine overview, A Drive Towards Fewer Cars:

In the next 19 years, the city expects 22,000 new housing units and 50,000 new jobs. Assuming the same percentage of people continued driving alone to work, the city estimates it would have to build 20 city blocks of 10-story parking garages downtown.

"Nobody wants to do that," says Patrice Gillespie-Smith, chief of staff of the city's Department of Transportation. "We are very motivated to offer incentives to get people out of their cars."

We cover innovations in personal transportation regularly, but it's important to remember that often the solutions to the problems cars create don't lie under the hood, but in how we build and run our cities.

(Thanks Clark!)

The future is not written in stone, but neither is it unbounded. Our actions, our choices shape the options we'll have in the days and years to come. We can, with all too little difficulty, make decisions that call into being an inescapable chain of events. But if we try, we can also make decisions that expand our opportunities, and push out the boundaries of tomorrow.

If there is a common theme across our work at WorldChanging, it is that we are far better served as a global civilization by actions and ideas that increase our ability to respond effectively, knowledgably, and sustainably to challenges that arise. In particular, I've focused on the value of openness as a means of worldchanging transformation: open as in free, transparent and diverse; open as in participatory and collaborative; open as in broadly accessible; and open as in choice and flexibility, as with the kind of future worth building -- the open future.

A Video News Report from 2030.

Anchor: Touting their movement as a combination of the economic theories of Mahatma Gandhi and the political science of Buckminster Fuller the Unplugged have now reduced the GDP of the United States of America by 20% over their 15 year programme.

Opponents of the movement call Unplugging an unscientific and cult-like political movement, but proponents say that "Unplugging" was the best decision they ever made. Let's hear from Jack Huston, a former investment banker...