SOLAR-POWERED SCOOTERS because they’re the most spaceefficient and energy-efficient method for carrying individuals and heavy loads longer distances within the city. TRAINS & TROLLEYS because rail is the most energy-efficient method of carrying heaviest cargos and large numbers of people. They guide and concentrate where humans settle, rather than promote sprawl. UNDERGROUND AND EARTH-BERMED HOUSING (ECOLONY) because heating and cooling without fossil fuels will become necessary.
New Roles for Traditional Powers Rebuilding Philadelphia so that we thrive during risky times will require that we create 100,000 ‘green collar’ jobs. There’s plenty work ahead, to make Philadelphia’s poor wealthier and its wealthy genuinely secure. Unless we create these jobs, in fact, Philadelphia will rot from fiscal crises (SEPTA, schools, health centers, government benefits and pensions, higher food and water prices) rising dropout and crime rates, shortages of oil and natural gas, worse climate shifts. Without these new jobs, Philadelphia’s middle class would gradually shrink by foreclosure, and crime would control every neighborhood. The fancy class would flee. TRICKLE DOWN NEEDS BUBBLE UP: Philadelphia’s dominant model for economic development is skyscrapers and condos, gentrifying from Center City outward. This is profitable mainly to middleand upper classes, and benefits many service workers, but does not well trickle down to Philadelphia’s 90,000 working poor and 40,000 unemployed. Philadelphia's income gap hobbles all of us, by requiring higher taxes to control crime; to subsidize housing, heating and electric; to fund Medicaid and Food Stamps.