Aaron Donovan

Manhattan Community Boards 4, 5 and 6 are holding a public hearing on Mayor Bloomberg's congesion pricing proposal. The public is invited to attend and present testimony.

Manhattan Community Board 8's transportation committee will hold a discussion of congestion pricing (expect a discussion of the "border effects" of East 86th Street) and on bike lanes planned for segments of East 89th, 90th and 91st Streets.

When George Monbiot, the popular columnist for the UK's Guardian newspaper, gets interested in something, he digs and digs until he's found what he's satisfied is the truth. Monbiot is interested in global warming, and presents in Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (U.S. Edition: South End Press, May 2007) a heavily footnoted 215-page brisk and compelling case for why we should all be very worried. This is probably the clearest and broadest book yet published about global warming, with doses of skepticism, inquisitiveness, sobriety and optimism. Every Streetsblog reader should read it. More important, every Streetsblog reader should get it into the hands of five Streetsblog non-readers and ask each of them to do the same.

Photo: Steve Silverman/NY Post

A personal note from Aaron Naparstek:

This is a guest post by Susan Murray, author of the Urban Naturalist.

The Staten Island Advance ran an article last Thursday about a "perfect storm" of crushing Staten Island-bound traffic on the Gowanus Expressway and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To give you a sense of the frustrated tone of the article, it was entitled "21-Month Nightmare: Agency Offers Zero Solutions for Verrazano Lane Mess." Here's how it began:

Honoring Mark Gorton, recipient of the 2nd Annual Gurin Award for Improving Biking and Walking in New York City

Bud & Walter Brewer Collection/Tulsa Historical Society, via The New York Times.

The proposals for the Governors Island open space redesign are in! The five finalists in the competition to design the Island's open spaces will present their work at a public forum.