The virtue of one way vs two way streets in urbanized areas falls into the category of  “reasonable people may disagree”. Some claim traffic calming benefits to two-way streets, but other insist on pedestrian safety from one-way systems.

However, there is a perhaps unintended and little-mentioned benefit to one-way streets – the increased ability of cyclists to illegally run red lights and thus maintain a higher average speed in a dense urban grid. With one-way streets, it is easy to dart across when there is a break in traffic – something that is 50% less likely to occur with two-way traffic.

When we started Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage back in the day we spent a lot of time talking about theory. Why start an ecovillage? What impact can we hope to have? Why not some other project – something urban or working within politics?

In my youthful zeal and naivete I would throw around phrases like “saving the world” or “fomenting radical change” with the full expectation that our efforts would do just that. Soon I realized the egotism in such statements, thinking that I (or we) would have such a huge influence seemed a bit self-indulgent.

And yet, I wouldn’t be doing Dancing Rabbit if I didn’t think it would change the world. I love my day to day life and am truly happy with the life I have chosen, but I also seem to have an unflappable urge to feel like I am contributing — doing my part to make the world a better place.

So how is Dancing Rabbit changing the world?