Climate change and healthy cities

Upwind Downwind 2008: Climate change and healthy cities conference

The City of Hamilton and Clean Air Hamilton will be hosting the 5^th Biennial Conference, Upwind Downwind: Climate Change and Healthy Cities on February 25 and 26.

A free public lecture, WALK & BIKE FOR LIFE, will be held on February 25 at 7 pm at the Hamilton Convention Centre featuring Gil Penalosa.

Gil is a global thinker with various work experiences in Canada and Latin America in fields related to parks, recreation, urban planning, and active transportation. He is the Executive Director at Walk and Bike for Life, member of the Board of Directors of American Trails and the City Parks Alliance (USA), and the North American Chairman for International Sport and Culture.

In the late 1990s he was commissioner of parks, sports and recreation in Bogota Colombia where his accomplishments include shutting down 91 kilometres of city roads every Sunday to create the Ciclovia where over 1.5 million people now walk, bicycle, run and skate every week.

Visit http://www.cleanair.hamilton.ca/updown/udconf.asp for more information about the conference. Note that there is a reduced registration fee for students ($30)

Check out some videos of the transformation in transportation in Bogota under Penalosa's direction.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/01/28/streetfilm-brt-in-bogota/ and
http://bcgp.blogspot.com/2007/12/ciclovia.html